THEIR  SON 
THE  NECKLACE 

BY 
EDUARDO    ZAMACOIS 


BONI    AND     LIVERIGHT 
NEW    YORK 


IV    >r 


ex  libris' 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

IRVINE 

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Carolyn  Kaplan 


'THEIR  SON" 
HH'THE  NECKLACE"^ 

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THEIR     SON 
THE    NECKLACE 


THEIR  SON, 

THE       NECKLACE 
BY      EDUARDO     Z^AMACOIj^ 

TRANSLATED   BY   GEORGE  *ALLAN    ENGLAND 


NEW    YORK 

BONI    AND    LIVERIGHT 
1919 


Copyright,  1919, 
By  BONI  &  LIVERIGIIT,  INC. 


Printed  in  the  U.  S.  A, 


To  My  Sister 


FOR  valuable  assistance  given  in  the  ren- 
dering of  localisms  and  obscure  passages  in  the 
following  stories,  I  wish  to  return  acknowl- 
edgment and  thanks  to  Miss  Dolores  Butter- 
field  and  Dona  Rosario  Munoz  de  Morrison. 
GEORGE  ALLAN  ENGLAND. 


EDUARDO  ZAMACOIS 

Artist — Apostle — Prophet 

FEW  writers  of  the  tremendously  virile 
and  significant  school  of  modern 
Spain  summarize  in  their  work  so 
completely  the  tendencies  of  the 
resurgimiento  as  does  Eduardo  Zamacois. 
"Renaissance"  is  really  the  watchword  of  his 
life  and  literary  output.  This  man  is  a  human 
dynamo,  a  revitalizing  force  in  Spanish  life 
and  letters,  an  artist  who  is  more  than  a  mere 
artist ;  he  is  a  man  with  a  message,  a  philosophy 
and  a  vision;  and  all  these  he  knows  how  to 
clothe  in  a  forceful,  masterly  and  compelling 
style,  which,  though  not  always  lucid,  always 
commands.  Zamacois  sees  life,  and  paints  it 
as  it  is,  sometimes  with  humor,  often  with  piti- 
less, dissecting  accuracy. 

To  me,  Zamacois  seems  a  Spanish  Guy  de 
Maupassant.  He  tells  a  story  in  much  the 
same  way,  with  that  grace  and  charm  which 
only  genius,  coupled  to  infinite  hard  work,  can 
crystallize  on  the  printed  page.  His  subjects 


VU1  EDUARDO   ZAMACOIS 

are  often  much  the  same  as  those  of  de  Mau1- 
passant.  His  sympathy  for  what  prigs  call 
"low  life";  his  understanding  of  the  heart  of 
the  common  people;  his  appreciation  of  the 
drama  and  pathos,  the  humor  and  tragedy  of 
ordinary,  everyday  life;  his  frank  handling  of 
the  really  vital  things — which  we  western- 
hemisphere  hypocrites  call  improprieties  and 
turn  up  our  noses  at,  the  while  we  secretly  pry 
into  them — all  mark  him  as  kin  with  the  great 
French  master.  Kin,  not  imitator.  Zamacois 
is  Zamacois,  no  one  else.  His  way  of  seeing, 
of  expressing,  is  all  his;  and  even  the  manner 
in  which  he  handles  the  Castillian,  construct- 
ing his  own  grammatical  forms  and  words  to 
suit  himself,  mark  him  a  pioneer.  He  is  a 
hard  man  to  translate.  Dictionaries  are  too 
narrow  for  the  limits  of  his  vocabulary.  Many 
of  his  words  baffle  folk  who  speak  Spanish  as  a 
birthright.  He  is  a  jeune  of  the  jeunes.  A 
creative,  not  an  imitative  force.  Power, 
thought,  vitality,  constructive  ideals:  these 
sketch  the  man's  outlines.  He  comes  of  a  dis- 
tinguished family.  The  great  Spanish  painter, 
of  his  same  name,  is  a  close  relative. 

His  personality  is  charming.    My  acquaint- 
ance with  him  forms  one  of  the  pleasantest 


EDUABDO  ZAMACOIS  IX 

chapters  in  a  life  of  literary  ups  and  downs. 
Ruddy,  vigorous,  with  short  hair  getting  a  bit 
dusty ;  with  a  contagious  laugh  and  a  frequent 
smile ;  with  a  kind  of  gay  worldliness  that  fas- 
cinates; a  nonchalant,  tolerant  philosophy;  a 
dry  humor ;  a  good  touch  at  the  piano ;  an  ex- 
cellent singing  voice  for  the  performance  of 
peteneras  and  folk-songs  without  number;  a 
splendid  platform-presence  as  a  lecturer  onr 
Spanish  literature  and  customs,  Zamacois  is 
an  all-round  man  of  intense  vitality,  deep  orig- 
inality and  human  breadth.  He  is  a  wise  man, 
widely  traveled,  versed  in  much  strange  lore; 
and  yet  he  has  kept  simplicity,  courtesy,  hu- 
manity. Spain  is  decadent?  Not  while  it  can 
produce  men,  thinkers,  writers  like  this  man — 
like  this  member  of  the  new  school  that  calls 
itself,  because  it  realizes  its  own  historic  mis- 
sion, el  resurgimiento. 

"Nothing  binds  nations  together  so  se- 
curely," he  said  to  me  one  day,  "and  nothing 
so  profoundly  vitalizes  them,  as  literature  and 
art.  Commercial  rivalries  lead  to  war.  But 
artistic  and  literary  matters  are  free  and  uni- 
versal. Beauty  cannot  be  appreciated,  alone. 
It  must  be  shared,  to  be  enjoyed.  My  ambi- 
tion— or  one  of  my  ambitions — is  to  bring  the 


EDUARDO   ZAMACOIS 


old  world  to  the  new,  and  to  take  back  the 
new  to  the  old."  He  spoke  with  enthusiasm, 
for  he  is  an  enthusiast  by  temperament,  filled 
with  nervous  energy  that  looks  out  compell- 
ingly  from  his  gray  eyes — not  at  all  a  Spanish 
type,  as  we  conceive  the  typical  Spaniard.  "I 
am  sorry  you  Americans  know  so  little  of 
Spanish  letters.  You  have  always  gone  to 
France,  rather  than  to  Spain,  for  your  literary 
loves.  To  you,  as  a  race,  the  names  of  Galdos, 
Benavente,  Emilia  Pardo  Bazan,  Valle  Inclan, 
Martinez  Ruiz,.  Baroja,  Trigo,  Machado,  the 
Quintero,  Carrere,  Marquina,  Dicenta,  Mar- 
tinez Sierra  and  Linares  Rivas  are  but  names. 
The  literary  world  still  looks  to  France;  but 
Spain  is  slowly  coming  into  her  own.  Her 
language  and  literature  are  spreading.  Civili- 
zation is  beginning  to  realize  something  of  the 
tremendous  fecundity  and  genius  of  the  modern 
Spanish  literary  renaissance." 
*  When  I  asked  him  about  himself,  he  tried 
to  evade  me.  The  man  is  modest.  He  prefers 
to  talk  about  Spain.  Only  with  difficulty  can 
one  make  him  reveal  anything  of  his  person- 
ality, his  life. 

"I  have  no  biography,"  he  laughed,  when  I 
insisted  on  knowing  something  of  him.    "Oh, 


EDUARDO   ZAMACOIS  XI 

yes,  I  was  born,  I  suppose.  We  all  are.  My 
birth  took  place  in  Cuba,  in  1878.  When  I 
was  three,  my  parents  took  me  to  Brussels.  I 
grew  up  there,  and  in  Spain  and  Paris.  My 
education — the  beginning  of  it — was  given  me 
in  Paris  and  at  the  University  of  Madrid.  De- 
gree? Well — a  'Philosophe  es  Lettres/  I 
much  prefer  the  title  of  Philosopher  of  Hu- 
manity." That,  alone,  shows  the  type  of  mind 
inherent  in  Zamacois. 

His  first  novel  was  published  when  he  was 
eighteen.  He  has  since  written  about  thirty 
more,  together  with  thousands  of  newspaper 
articles  in  El  Liberal,  El  Impartial,  and  no 
end  of  others.  He  has  produced  ten  plays, 
and  many  volumes  of  criticisms,  chronicles  and 
miscellanea,  beside  two  volumes  on  the  great 
war.  His  pen  must  have  had  few  idle  mo- 
ments ! 

In  addition  to  all  this,  he  has  edited  several 
papers.  At  twenty-two  he  was  editing  Ger- 
minal. A  Socialist?  Yes.  Once  on  a  time 
more  radical  than  now,  when  the  more  uni- 
versal tendencies  have  entered  in,  he  still  be- 
lieves in  the  principles  of  Socialism,  as  do  so 
many  of  the  "young,"  all  over  Europe. 

He  himself  divides  his  work  into  three  main 


Xll  EDUARDO  ZAMACOIS 

epochs.  The  first  has  love  for  its  keynote; 
and  here  we  find  El  Seductor,  Sobre  el  Abis- 
trvo,  Pimto-Negro,  Loca  de  Amor,  De  Carne 
y  Hueso,  Duelo  a  Muerte,  Impresiones  de 
Arte,  Incesto,  La  Enferma,  De  mi  Vida,  Amar 
a  Obscuras,  Bodas  Trdgicas,  Noche  de  Bodas, 
El  Lacayo,  and  Memorias  de  wia  Cortesana. 
The  second  epoch  deals  with  death  and  mys- 
teries, the  future  life,  religion.  (Zamacois  is 
religious  in  the  sense  that  so  much  of  the  young 
blood  of  the  Latin  world  is  religious — nega- 
tively. They  think  more  clearly  than  we  An- 
glo-Saxons, in  some  way,  these  Latins!)  El 
Otro,  El  Misterio  de  un  Hombre  Pequenito 
and  some  others  fall  into  this  epoch.  The 
third  is  characterized  by  a  wider  vision,  a  more 
complete  realization  of  the  essential  tragedy 
and  irony  of  human  life,  and  is  tempered  by 
the  understanding  that  comes  to  all  of  us  when 
graying  hair  and  fading  illusions  tell  us  we 
are  no  longer  young.  Here  we  find  Anos  de 
Miseria  y  de  Risa,  La  Opinion  Ajena  and 
stories  of  the  type  of  those  in  the  present  vol- 
ume. Surely  El  Hijo  and  El  Collar  are  cyni- 
cal enough  to  rank  with  masterpieces  of  cyni- 
cism in  any  tongue. 

Zamacois'   plays   are  distinguished  by  the 


EDUABDO   ZAMACOIS  Xlll 

same  dramatic,  often  mystic,  elements  that 
make  his  novels  and  short  stories  of  such  vital 
interest.  The  more  important  titles  are: 
Teatro  Galante,  Nochebuena,  El  Posada 
Vuelve,  and  Frio. 

"Spain  still  dominates  the  whole  of  Spanish 
literature,"  says  Zamacois.  "The  Latin  new 
world  has  had  but  slight  influence  thereon. 
And  Spain  is  fast  becoming  liberalized.  Resur- 
gimiento  is  the  pass-word,  all  along  the  line. 
Even  our  women  are  becoming  liberalized — 
or  we  are  beginning  to  emancipate  them,  a 
little.  That  is  highly  revolutionary — for 
Spain!  The  war  has  flooded  Spain  with  new 
ideas,  not  only  abstract  but  concrete.  We  are 
getting  free  speech  and  a  free  press — is  Amer- 
ica winning  more  latitude,  or  shrinking  to  less  ? 
— and  we  are  enforcing  education.  We  are 
reviving  physically.  Athletic  sports  are  com- 
ing in.  These  are  all  signs  of  the  Renaissance, 
just  as  the  new  school  of  writers  is  a  sign.  I 
suppose  most  of  the  new  blood  is  indifferent 
to  religion.  Spain  has  a  small  body  of  religion- 
ist fanatics,  a  strong  minority  of  non-religious, 
intellectual  elite,  and  a  vast  body  of  indifferent 
folk,  slowly  maldng  progress  toward  enlight-' 
enment, 


XIV  EDUARDO   ZAMACOIS 

"Spain's  misfortune  is  this — that  you  for- 
eigners have  seen  in  her  only  the  picturesque, 
the  medieval,  the  exotic.  Spain  has  scientific, 
engineering  and  literary  triumphs  to  be  proud 
of  now,  as  well  as  ivy-grown  cathedrals,  bull- 
rings and  palaces.  Under  her  old,  hard  ca- 
rapace, new  blood  is  leaping;  it  leaps  from  her 
strong  heart,  across  half  the  world. 

"Our  real  rebirth  took  place  after  the  Span- 
ish-American war,  when  our  colonial  system 
collapsed  and  we  had  to  roll  up  our  sleeves  and 
support  ourselves  by  hard  work.  Defeat  was 
to  us  a  blessing  in  disguise.  Spain  is  to-day  a 
much  different  and  better  land  than  it  was 
twenty  years  ago.  For  one  thing,  we  use  more 
soap,  these  days.  As  the  church  declines,  bath- 
tubs multiply.  %Tendre  que  decir  mas? 

"A  new  spirit  and  a  new  life  are  to-day  stir- 
ring in  ancient  Iberia.  A  splendid  artistic 
and  literary  renaissance,  vast  commercial  un- 
dertakings and  enormous  manufacturing  en- 
terprises are  all  developing  hand  in  hand. 
Spain's  past  is  glorious.  Her  future  is  both 
glorious  and  bright." 

GEORGE  ALLAN  ENGLAND. 

12  Park  Drive,  BrooTdine,  Mass. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PREFACE: 
EDUARDO  ZAMACOIS ,    .    vii 

THEIR  SON 1 

THE  NECKLACE    ....  91 


XV 


THEIR     SON 


AT  about  the  age  of  thirty,  tired  of 
living  all  alone  with  no  one  to  love, 
Amadeo  Zureda  got  married.   This 
Zureda  was  a  stocky  fellow,  neither 
tall  nor  short,  dark,  thoughtful,  and  with  a  cer- 
tain slow,  sure  way  of  moving.    The  whole  es- 
sence of  his  face,  the  soul  of  it — to  speak  so 
— was  rooted  in  the  taciturn  energy  of  the 
space  between  his  eyebrows.    There  you  found 
the  man,  more  than  in  the  rough  black  mus- 
tache which  cut  across  his  face ;  even  more  than 
in  the  thickness  of  his  cheekbones,  the  square- 
ness of  his  jaws,  the  hard  solidity  of  his  nose. 
His  brow  was  somber  as  an  evil  memory. 

One  after  the  other  you  might  erase  all  the 
lines  of  that  face,  and  so  long  as  you  left  the 
thick-tufted  brows,  you  would  not  have 
changed  the  expression  of  Amadeo  Zureda. 
For  there  dwelt  the  whole  spirit  of  the  man, 
reserved  yet  ardent, 

I 


THEIR   SON 


His  marriage  rescued  Rafaela,  whom  he 
made  his  wife,  from  the  slavish  toil  of  a  work- 
woman. Rafaela  was  just  over  eighteen,  a 
buxom  brunette  with  big,  roguish,  black  eyes. 
Her  breath  was  sweet,  her  lips  vivid,  her  mo- 
bile hips  full  and  inviting,  like  her  breasts ;  and 
she  had  a  free-and-easy,  energetic,  enterpris- 
ing way  of  walking.  Joined  to  a  kind  of  un- 
tamed grace  (just  a  bit  vulgar,  in  the  manner 
of  a  daughter  of  the  people),  she  possessed  a 
certain  distinction  both  of  face  and  manner,  of 
moving,  of  showing  likes  and  dislikes,  that  en- 
hanced and  exalted  her  beauty.  Her  hands 
were  small  and  well  cared  for.  She  liked  fine 
shoes  and  starched  petticoats  that  frou-froued 
as  she  walked. 

Her  mind  resembled  her  body.  It  was  rest- 
less, lively  and  incapable  of  keeping  the  same 
point  of  view  for  very  long.  When  she  talked, 
those  coquettish  eyes  of  hers  shone  brighter 
than  ever,  with  enjoyment.  Her  mouth  was 
rather  large;  her  teeth  dazzling;  and  the  light 
of  laughter  always  shone  there  like  an  altar- 
lamp. 

Amadeo  worshiped  her.  When  he  came 
home  at  night  from  work,  Rafaela  ran  to  meet 
him  with  noisy  jubilation  and  then  cuddled 


THEIR  SON  3 


herself  caressingly  on  his  kneec,,  after  he  had 
sat  down.  All  this  filled  Zureda  with  inef- 
fable joy,  so  that  he  became  quite  speechless, 
in  ecstasy.  At  such  times  even  the  thoughtful 
scar  of  the  wrinkle  between  his  brows  grew  less 
severe,  in  the  calm  gravity  of  his  dark  fore- 
head. 

The  newly  married  couple  took  lodgings  on 
the  sixth  floor  of  a  house  not  far  from  the 
E  station  del  Norte.  The  house  was  new,  and 
their  apartment  was  full  of  sun  and  cheer, 
with  big,  well-lighted  rooms.  They  had  a 
couple  of  balconies,  too;  and  these  the  busy, 
artistic  hands  of  Rafaela  kept  smothered  in 
flowers. 

Amadeo  was  a  locomotive-engineer.  The 
company  liked  him  well  and  more  than  well. 
During  the  two  years  he  had  been  on  the 
Madrid-Bilbao  run  he  had  never  been  called 
in  for  reprimand.  He  was  intelligent  and  a 
hard  worker.  Fifteen  hours  he  could  stand 
up  to  the  job,  and  still  see  just  as  clearly  as 
ever  with  those  black,  powerful  eyes  of  his.  In 
his  corduroys,  this  muscular,  dark-skinned,  im- 
passive man  reminded  you  of  a  bronze. 

He  was  devoted  to  his  job.  He  had  learned 
engineering  in  the  States,  which  everybody 


4  THEIR   SON 


knows  is  a  master-country  for  railroading. 
His  parents  had  both  died  when  he  was  very 
young.  He  had  dedicated  the  whole  plen- 
itude of  his  affections,  his  sap  and  vigor  as  a 
single  man,  to  his  work.  Foot  by  foot  he  knew 
the  right-of-way  from  Madrid  to  Bilbao  in  its 
most  intimate  details,  so  that  he  could  have 
made  that  run  blindfolded,  just  as  safely  as  if 
he  had  been  walking  about  his  own  house. 
There  were  clumps  of  trees,  ravines,  rivers, 
hills  and  farms  that,  to  his  eyes,  had  the  de- 
cisive meaning  of  a  watch  or  a  map. 

"At  such-and-such  a  place,"  he  would  think, 
"I've  got  to  jam  the  brakes  on;  there's  a  down- 
grade just  beyond."  Or  else:  "Here's  the 
bridge.  It  must  be  so-and-so  o'clock."  His 
grip  on  such  ideas  of  time  and  space  was  al- 
ways exactly  right.  He  seemed  infallible. 
Zureda  knew  that  all  these  inanimate  objects, 
scattered  along  the  line,  were  so  many  faith- 
ful friends  incapable  of  deceiving  him. 

He  shared  this  fetichistic  love  of  the  land- 
scape with  the  love  inspired  in  him  by  his  en- 
gines. Ordinarily  he  ran  two:  No.  187  and 
No.  1,082.  He  called  the  first  "Nigger,"  and 
the  second  "Sweetie."  Nigger  was  an  intract- 
able brute,  ill-tempered  and  hard-bitted.  When 


THEIR   SON 


she  tackled  a  hill  she  seemed  to  quiver  with 
pain,  and  in  her  iron  belly  strange  threaten- 
ing shrieks  resounded.  She  skidded  downhill 
and  was  hard  to  get  under  control.  You  would 
have  said  some  wayward  spirit  was  thrashing 
about  inside  her,  eternally  rebelling  against  all 
government.  She  was  logy,  at  times,  and  hated 
to  start ;  but  once  you  got  her  going  you  had  a 
proper  job  to  stop  her.  When  she  rushed  in 
under  the  black  arch  of  a  tunnel,  her  whistle 
shrieked  with  ear-splitting  alarum,  like  a  man 
screeching. 

"Sweetie"  was  a  different  sort,  meek,  obedi- 
ent, strong  and  good-willed  on  an  up-grade, 
cautious  and  full  of  reserve  on  a  down,  when 
the  headlong  flight  of  the  train  had  to  bd 
checked. 

Twice  a  week,  each  time  that  Amadeo  started 
on  a  run,  his  wife  always  asked  him : 

"Which  machine  have  you  got,  to-day?" 

If  it  was  "Sweetie,"  she  had  nothing  to 
worry  about. 

"That's  all  right,"  she  would  say.  "But  the 
other  one!  I  certainly  am  afraid  of  it.  It's 
bad  luck,  sure!" 

Zureda,  however,  liked  to  handle  both  of 
them.  Sometimes  he  preferred  one,  sometimes 


6  THEIR   SON 


the  other,  according  to  the  state  of  his  nerves. 
When  his  mood  was  cheerful,  he  liked 
"Sweetie"  best,  because  there  wasn't  much 
work  about  running  her.  He  preferred  her, 
usually,  on  quiet  days,  when  the  sun  was  giving 
the  earth  a  big,  warm  kiss.  Zureda's  fireman 
was  a  chap  named  Pedro;  an  Andalusian,  full 
of  spicy  songs  and  tales.  Amadeo  rather  liked 
to  hear  these,  always  keeping  his  eyes  fixed  on 
blue  distances  that  seemed  to  smile  at  him.  Out 
ahead,  over  the  boiler,  the  rails  stretched  on 
and  on,  shining  like  silver  in  the  sun.  The 
warm  air  blew  about  Zureda,  laden  with 
sweet  country  smells.  Under  his  feet  the  en- 
gineer felt  the  shuddering  of  "Sweetie,"  tame, 
laborious,  neither  bucking  nor  snorting ;  and  at 
such  times,  both  proud  and  caressing  as  if  he 
loved  her,  he  would  murmur : 

"Get  along  with  you,  my  pretty  lamb!" 
At  other  times  the  engineer's  full-blooded 
vigor  suffered  vague  irritations  and  capricious 
rages,  unwholesome  disturbances  of  temper 
which  made  him  unwilling  to  talk,  and  dug 
still  deeper  the  grim  line  between  his  brows. 
Then  it  was  that  he  preferred  to  take  out 
"Nigger."  Stubborn,  menacing,  rebellious 
against  all  his  demands,  the  fight  she  gave  him 


THEIR   SON 


— a  fight  always  potentially  dangerous — acted 
as  a  sedative  to  his  nerves  and  seemed  to  pacify 
him.  At  such  times  Pedro,  the  Andalusian 
with  the  risque  stories  and  the  spicy  songs,  felt 
the  numbing,  evil  humor  of  his  engineer,  and 
grew  still. 

All  along  the  line,  chiming  into  the  uproar- 
ious quiverings  of  the  engine  and  the  whistling 
gusts  of  wind,  a  long  colloquy  of  hate  seemed 
to  develop  between  the  man  and  the  machine. 
Zureda  would  grit  his  teeth  and  grunt : 

"Go  on,  you  dog !  Some  hill — but  you've  got 
to  make  it!  Come  on,  get  to  itl" 

Then  he  would  fling  open  the  furnace  door, 
burning  red  as  any  Hell-pit,  and  with  his  own 
furious  hand  would  fling  eight  or  ten  shovels 
of  coal  into  the  firebox.  The  machine  would 
shudder,  as  if  lashed  by  punishment.  Enraged 
snorts  would  fill  her;  and  from  her  smoking 
shoulders  something  like  a  wave  of  hate  seemed 
to  stream  back. 

Zureda  always  came  home  from  trips  like 
these  bringing  some  present  or  other  for  his 
wife;  perhaps  a  pair  of  corsets,  a  fur  collar,  a 
box  of  stockings.  The  wife,  knowing  just  the 
time  when  the  express  would  get  in,  always 
went  out  on  the  balcony  to  see  it  pass.  Her 


8  THEIR   SON 


husband  never  failed  to  let  her  know  he  was 
coming,  from  afar,  b.y  blowing  a  long  whistle- 
blast. 

If  she  were  still  abed  when  the  train  arrived, 
she  would  jump  up,  fling  on  a  few  clothes  and 
run  to  the  balcony.  Her  joyous  face  would 
smile  out  at  the  world  from  the  green  peep- 
holes through  the  plants  in  their  flower-pots. 
In  a  moment  or  two  she  could  see  the  train 
among  the  wooded  masses  of  Moncloa.  On  it 
came  with  a  roar  and  a  rattle,  hurling  its  un- 
dulating black  body  along  the  polished  rails. 
Joyously  the  engineer  waved  his  handkerchief 
at  her,  from  the  engine-cab ;  and  only  at  times 
like  these  did  his  brow — to  which  no  smile  ever 
lent  complete  contentment — smooth  itself  out 
a  little  and  seem  almost  happy. 

Amadeo  Zureda  desired  nothing.  His  work 
was  hard,  but  all  he  needed  to  make  him  glad 
was  just  the  time  between  runs — two  nights  a 
week — that  he  spent  in  Madrid.  His  whole 
brusque  but  honest  soul  took  on  fresh  youth 
there,  under  the  roof  of  his  peaceful  home,  sur- 
rounded by  the  simple  pieces  of  furniture  that 
had  been  bought  one  at  a  time.  This  was  all 
the  reward  he  wanted.  The  cold  that  pierced 
his  bones,  out  there  in  the  storms  along  the 


THEIR   SON  9 


railway-line,  gradually  changed  to  a  glow  of 
warmth  in  the  caressing  arms  of  his  wife.  Body 
and  soul  both  fell  asleep  there  in  the  comfort 
of  a  happy  and  sensual  well-being. 


II 


IT  hardly  takes  more  than  a  couple  of 
years  of  married  life  to  age  a  docile  man ; 
or  at  least — about  the  same  thing — to  fill 
him  with  those  forward-looking  ideas  of 
caution,  economy  and  peace  that  sow  the  seed 
of  fear  for  the  morrow,  in  quiet  souls. 

One  time  Zureda  was  laid  up  a  while  with  a 
bad  cold.  Getting  better  of  this,  the  engineer 
on  a  momentous  night  spoke  seriously  to  his 
wife  concerning  their  future.  His  bronzed 
face  lying  on  the  whiteness  of  the  pillows 
brought  out  the  salience  of  his  cheek-bones  and 
the  strength  of  his  profile.  The  vertical  furrow 
between  his  brows  seemed  deeper  than  ever,  cut 
into  the  serene  gravity  of  his  forehead.  His 
wife  listened  to  him  attentively,  sitting  on  the 
edge  of  the  bed,  with  one  leg  crossed  over  the 
other.  She  cradled  the  upper  knee  between 
joined  hands. 

Slowly  the  engineer's  talk  unwound  itself, 
to  the  effect  that  life  is  a  poor  thing  at  best, 
constantly  surrounded  by  misfortunes  that  can 
strike  us  in  an  infinitude  of  ways.  To-day  it's 

10 


THEIR   SON  11 


a  cold  draft,  to-morrow  a  chill  or  a  sore  throat, 
or  maybe  a  cancer,  that  death  uses  to  steal  our 
lives  away.  All  about  us,  yawning  like  im- 
mense jaws,  the  earth  is  always  opening,  the 
earth  into  which  all  of  us  must  some  time  de- 
scend ;  and  in  this  very  swift  and  savagely  uni- 
versal hecatomb  no  one  can  be  sure  of  witness- 
ing both  the  rising  and  the  setting  of  the  same 
day. 

"I'm  not  afraid  of  work,  you  know,"  went  on 
Zureda,  "but  engines  are  made  of  iron,  and 
even  so  they  wear  out  at  last  and  get  tired  of 
running.  Men  are  just  the  same.  And  when 
it  happens  to  me,  as  it's  got  to,  some  day, 
what'll  become  of  us,  then?" 

Calmly  Rafaela  shook  her  head.  She  by  no 
means  shared  her  husband's  fears.  No  doubt 
Amadeo's  sickness  had  made  him  timorous  and 
pessimistic. 

"I  think  you're  making  it  worse  than  it  really 
is,"  she  answered.  "Old  age  is  still  a  long  way 
off;  and,  besides,  very  likely  we'll  have  children 
to  help  us." 

Zureda's  gesture  was  a  negation. 

"That  don't  matter,"  he  replied.  "Children 
may  not  come  at  all ;  and  even  if  they  do,  what 
of  that?  As  for  old  age  being  far  off,  you*r§ 


12  THEIE  SON 


wrong.  Even  to-day,  do  you  think  I've  got 
the  strength  and  quickness,  or  even  the  enjoy- 
ment in  my  work,  that  I  had  when  I  was  twen- 
ty-five? Not  on  your  life!  Old  age  is  cer- 
tainly coming,  and  coming  fast.  So  I  tell  you 
again  we've  got  to  save  something. 

"If  we  do,  when  I  can  no  longer  run  an 
engine  I'll  open  a  little  machine-shop;  and  if 
I  should  die  suddenly,  leaving  you  fifteen  or 
twenty  thousand  pesetas*  you  could  easily 
start  a  good  laundry  in  some  central  location, 
for  that's  the  kind  of  work  you  understand." 

To  all  this  Zureda  added  a  number  of  other 
arguments,  discreet  and  weighty,  so  that  his 
wife  declared  herself  convinced.  The  engineer 
already  had  a  plan  laid  out,  that  made  him 
talk  this  way.  Among  the  people  who  had 
come  to  see  him,  while  he  had  been  sick,  was 
one  Manolo  Berlanga,  whose  friendship  with 
him  had  been  brotherly  indeed.  This  Ber- 
langa had  a  job  at  a  silversmith's  shop  in  the 
Paseo  de  San  Vincente.  He  had  no  relatives, 
and  made  rather  decent  wages.  A  good  many 
times  he  had  told  Zureda  how  much  he  wanted 
to  find  some  respectable  house  where  he  could 
live  in  a  decent,  private  way,  paying  perhaps 

*  Three  or  four  thousand  dollars. 


THEIK  SON  13 


four  or  five  pesetas  a  day  for  board  and  room. 

"Suppose,  now,"  went  on  Amadeo,  "that 
Manolo  should  pay  five  pesetas  a  day;  that's 
thirty  duros  a  month — thirty  good  dollars — 
and  the  house  costs  us  eight  dollars.  Well,  that 
leaves  us  twenty-two  dollars  a  month,  and  with 
that,  and  a  few  dollars  that  I'll  put  in,  we  can 
all  live  high." 

To  this  Rafaela  consented,  rather  stirred  by 
the  new  ideas  awakened  by  the  innovation.  The 
silversmith  was  a  free-and-easy,  agreeable 
young  fellow,  who  chattered  all  the  time  and 
played  the  guitar  in  no  mean  fashion. 

"Yes,  but  how  about  a  place  for  him?"  asked 
she.  "Is  there  any?  What  room  could  we 
give  him?" 

"Why,  the  little  alcove  off  the  dining-room, 
of  course." 

"Yes,  I  was  thinking  of  that,  too.  But  it's 
mighty  small,  and  there's  no  light  in  it." 

The  engineer  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"It's  good  enough  just  to  sleep  in!"  he  ex- 
claimed. "If  we  were  dealing  with  a  woman, 
that  would  be  different.  But  we  men  get 
along  any  old  way,  all  right." 

Rafaela  wrote  to  Berlanga  next  day,  at  her 
husband's  request,  telling  him  to  come  and  see 


14  THEIR   SON 


them.  Promptly  on  the  dot  the  silversmith 
arrived.  He  looked  about  twenty-eight,  wore 
tightly-belted  velveteen  trousers  gaitered  un- 
der the  shoe,  and  a  dark  overcoat  with  astra- 
khan collar  and  cuffs.  He  was  of  middle 
height,  lean,  pale-faced,  with  a  restless  man- 
ner, a  fluent,  witty  way  of  talking.  On  some 
pretext  or  other  the  wife  went  out,  leaving  the 
two  men  to  chew  things  over  and  come  to  an 
agreement. 

"Now,  as  for  living  with  you  people,"  said 
Berlanga,  "I'll  be  very  glad  to  give  five  pesetas 
per.  Or  I'll  better  that,  if  you  say  so." 

"No,  no,  thanks,"  answered  Zureda.  "I 
don't  want  to  be  bargaining  with  you.  We  can 
all  help  each  other.  You  and  I  are  like  broth- 
ers, anyhow." 

That  night  after  supper,  Rafaela  dragged 
all  the  useless  furniture  out  of  the  dining- 
room  alcove  and  swept  and  scoured  it  clean. 
Next  day  she  got  up  early  to  go  to  a  hard-by 
pawnshop,  where  she  bought  her  an  iron  bed 
with  a  spring  and  a  woolen  mattress.  This  bed 
she  carefully  set  up,  and  fixed  it  all  fine  and 
soft.  A  couple  of  chairs,  a  washstand  and  a 
little  table  covered  with  a  green  baize  spread 
completed  the  furnishing  of  the  room. 


THEIB  SON  15 


After  everything  was  ready,  the  young 
woman  dressed  and  combed  herself  to  receive 
the  guest,  who  arrived  about  the  middle  of  the 
afternoon  with  his  luggage,  to  wit:  a  box  with 
his  workman's  tools,  a  trunk  and  a  little  cask. 
This  cask  held  a  certain  musty  light  wine, 
which — so  Berlanga  said,  after  coffee  and  one 
of  Zureda's  cigars  had  made  him  expansive — 
had  been  given  him  by  a  "lady  friend"  of  his 
who  ran  a  tavern. 

A  few  days  passed,  days  of  unusual  pleas- 
ure to  the  engineer  and  his  wife,  for  the  silver- 
smith was  a  man  of  joyful  moods  and  very  fond 
of  crooking  his  elbow,  so  that  his  naturally  fer- 
tile conversation  became  hyperbolically  colored 
and  quite  Andalusian  in  its  exuberance.  At 
dessert,  the  merry  quips  of  Berlanga  woke  so- 
norous explosions  of  hilarity  in  Amadeo. 
When  he  laughed,  the  engineer  would  lean  his 
massive  shoulders  against  the  back  of  the  chair. 
Now  and  again,  as  if  to  underscore  his  bursts 
of  merriment,  he  would  deal  the  table  shrewd 
blows.  After  this  he  would  slowly  emit  his 
opinions;  and  if  he  had  to  advise  Berlanga,  he 
did  it  in  a  kind  of  paternal  way,  patiently, 
good-naturedly. 

When  he  was  quite  well  again,  Amadeo 


16  THEIR  SON 


went  back  to  work.  The  morning  he  took 
leave  of  his  wife,  she  asked  him: 

"Which  engine  have  you  got,  to-day?" 

"Nigger,"  he  answered. 

"My,  what  bad  luck!  I'm  afraid  some- 
thing's going  to  happen  to  you!" 

"Rubbish  1  Why  should  it?  I  can  handle 
her!" 

He  kissed  Rafaela,  tenderly  pressing  her 
against  his  big,  strong  breast.  At  this  mo- 
ment an  unwholesome  thought,  grotesquely 
cruel,  cut  his  mind  like  a  whip ;  a  thought  that 
he  would  pass  the  night  awake,  out  in  the 
storm,  in  the  engine-cab,  while  there  in  Mad- 
rid another  man  would  be  sleeping  under  the 
same  roof  with  his  wife.  But  this  unworthy 
suspicion  lasted  hardly  a  second.  The  engi- 
neer realized  that  Berlanga,  though  a  riotous, 
dissipated  chap,  was  at  heart  a  brotherly 
friend,  far  from  base  enough  to  betray  him  in 
any  such  horrible  manner. 

Rafaela  went  with  her  husband  to  the  stair- 
way. There  they  both  began  again  to  in- 
flame each  other  with  ardent  kisses  and  em- 
braces of  farewell.  The  wife's  black  eyes  filled 
with  tears  as  she  told  him  to  keep  himself  well 


THEIE   SON  17 


bundled  up  and  to  think  often  of  her.  Tears 
quite  blinded  her. 

"What  a  good  lass  she  is!"  murmured  Zu- 
reda. 

And  as  he  recalled  the  poisonous  doubt  of 
a  moment  before,  the  man's  ingenuous  nobility 
felt  shame. 

The  life  of  Manolo  Berlanga  turned  out  to 
be  pretty  disreputable.  He  liked  wine, 
women  and  song,  and  many  a  time  came  home 
in  the  wee  small  hours,  completely  paralyzed. 
This  invariably  happened  during  the  absence 
of  the  engineer.  Next  morning  he  was  always 
very  remorseful,  and  went  with  contrition  to 
the  kitchen,  where  Rafaela  was  getting  break- 
fast. 

"Are  you  mad  at  me?"  he  used  to  ask. 

She  answered  him  in  a  maternal  kind  of  way 
and  told  him  to  be  good ;  this  always  made  him 
laugh. 

"None  o'  that!"  he  used  to  say.  "I  don't 
like  being  good.  That's  one  of  the  many  in- 
flictions marriage  forces  on  a  man.  Don't  you 
have  enough  'being  good'  in  this  house,  with 
Amadeo?" 

Among  men,  love  is  often  nothing  more  than 


18  THEIE   SON 


the  carnal  obsession  produced  in  them  by  the 
constant  and  repeated  sight  of  one  and  the 
same  woman.  Every  laugh,  every  motion  of 
the  woman  moving  about  them  possesses  a 
charm  at  first  hardly  noticed.  But  after  a  while, 
under  the  spell  of  a  phenomenon  we  may  call 
cumulative,  this  charm  waxes  potent;  it  grows 
till  some  time  it  unexpectedly  breaks  forth  in 
an  enveloping,  conquering  passion. 

Now  one  morning  it  happened  that  Manolo 
Berlanga  was  eating  breakfast  in  the  dining- 
room  before  going  to  the  shop.  Rafaela,  her 
back  toward  him,  was  scrubbing  the  floor  of 
the  hallway. 

"How  you  do  work,  my  lady!"  cried  the  sil- 
versmith, jokingly. 

Her  answer  was  a  gay-toned  laugh;  then 
she  went  on  with  her  task,  sometimes  recoiling 
so  that  she  almost  sat  on  her  heels,  again 
stretching  her  body  forward  with  an  energy 
that  lowered  the  tight-corseted  slimness  of  her 
waist  and  set  in  motion  the  fullness  of  her 
yielding  hips.  The  silversmith  had  often  seen 
her  thus,  without  having  paid  any  heed;  but 
hardly  had  he  come  to  realize  her  sensual  ap- 
peal when  the  flame  of  desire  blazed  up  in 
him, 


THEIB  SON  19 


"There's  a  neat  one  for  you!"  thought  he. 

And  he  kept  on  looking  at  her,  his  vicious 
imagination  dwelling  on  the  perfections  of  that 
carnal  flower,  soft  and  vibrant.  His  brown 
study  continued  a  while.  Then  suddenly,  with 
the  brusqueness  of  ill-temper,  he  got  up. 

"Well,  so  long!"  said  he. 

He  stopped  in  the  stairway  to  greet  a  neigh- 
bor and  light  a  cigarette.  By  the  time  he  had 
reached  the  street-door  he  had  forgotten  all 
about  Rafaela.  But,  later,  his  desire  once 
more  awoke.  At  dinner  he  dissimulated  his 
observations  of  the  young  woman's  bare  arms. 
Strong  and  well-molded  they  were,  those  arms, 
and  under  the  cloth  of  her  sleeves  rolled  up 
above  the  elbow,  the  flesh  swelled  exuberantly. 

"Hm!  You  haven't  combed  your  hair,  to- 
day," said  Berlanga. 

She  answered  with  a  laugh — one  of  those 
frankly  voluptuous  laughs  that  women  with 
fine  teeth  enjoy. 

"You're  right,"  said  she.  "You  certainly 
notice  everything.  I  didn't  have  time." 

"It  don't  matter,"  answered  the  gallant. 
"Pretty  women  always  look  best  that  way,  with 
their  hair  flying  and  their  arms  bare." 

"You  mean  that,  really?" 


20  THEIB  SON 


"I  certainly  do!" 

"Then  you've  got  the  temperament  and 
makings  of  a  married  man." 

"I  have?" 

"Sure!" 

"How's  that?" 

She  laughed  again,  gayly,  coquettishly, 
adding: 

"Because  you  already  know  that  married 
women  generally  don't  pay  much  attention  to 
their  husbands.  That's  what  hurts  marriage 
— women  not  caring  how  they  look." 

So  they  went  on  talking  away,  and  all 
through  their  rather  spicy  conversation,  full 
of  meaning,  a  mutual  attraction  began  to  make 
itself  felt.  Silently  this  began  sapping  their 
will-power.  At  last  the  woman  glanced  at  her 
clock  on  the  sideboard. 

"Eight  o'clock,"  said  she.  "I  wonder  what 
Amadeo's  doing,  now?" 

"Well,  that's  according,"  answered  Ber- 
langa.  "When  did  he  get  to  Bilbao?" 

"This  morning." 

"Then  he's  probably  been  asleep  part  of  the 
time,  and  now  I  guess  he's  playing  dominoes 
in  some  cafe.  And  we,  meantime — we're  here 
— you  and  I " 


THEIR   SON  21 


"And  you  don't  feel  very  well,  eh?"  she 
asked. 

"I?" 

Looking  at  Rafaela  with  eloquent  steadi- 
ness he  slowly  added: 

"I  feel  a  damn  sight  better  than  he  does!" 

Then,  while  he  drank  his  coffee,  the  silver- 
smith laid  out  on  the  table  his  board-money 
for  that  week.  He  began  to  count: 

"Two  and  two's  four — nine — eleven — 
thirty-eight  pesetas.  Rotten  week  I've  had! 
Say,  I've  hardly  pulled  down  enough  for  my 
drinks." 

He  got  together  seven  dollars,  piled  them 
up— making  a  little  column  of  silver  change — 
and  shoved  them  over  to  Rafaela. 

"Here  you  go!"  said  he. 

She  blushed,  as  she  answered.  You  would 
have  thought  her  offended  by  the  somewhat 
hostile  opposition  of  debtor  and  creditor  that 
the  money  seemed  to  have  set  up  between 
them.  She  asked: 

"What's  all  this  you're  giving  me?" 

"Say!  What  d'you  suppose?  Don't  I  pay 
every  week?  Well,  then,  here's  my  board. 
Seven  days  at  five  pesetas  per,  that's  just 


22  THEIE  SON 


thirty-five  pesetas,  huh?  What's  the  matter 
with  you?" 

He  made  the  coins  jump  and  jingle  in  his 
agile  hand,  well-used  to  dealing  cards.  Then 
he  added: 

"To-day's  Saturday.  So  then,  I'll  pay  you 
now.  That'll  leave  me  three  pesetas  for  ex- 
tras— tobacco  and  car-fare.  Oh,  it's  a  fine 
time  ril  have!" 

With  a  lordly  gesture,  good-natured,  pro- 
tecting, the  woman  handed  back  Berlanga's 
money. 

"Next  week  you  can  pay  up,"  said  she. 
"I'm  fixed  all  right.  By  luck,  even  if  I'm  not 
five  dollars  to  the  good,  I'm  not  five  to  the 
bad." 

The  silversmith  offered  the  money  again. 
But  this  time  the  offer  was  weak,  and  was 
made  only  in  the  half-hearted  way  that  seemed 
necessary  to  keep  him  in  good  standing.  Then 
he  got  up  from  the  table,  rubbed  his  hands  up 
and  down  his  legs  to  smooth  the  ugly  bulge  out 
of  the  knees  of  his  trousers,  pulled  down  his 
vest  and  readjusted  the  knot  of  his  cravat 
before  the  mirror.  He  exclaimed  with  a  kind 
of  boastful  swagger: 

"D'you  know  what  I'm  thinking?" 


THEIR   SON  23 


"Tell  me!" 

"Oh,  I  don't  dare." 

"Why  not?" 

"You  might  get  mad  at  me." 

"No,  no!" 

"Promise  you  won't?" 

"On  my  word  of  honor !  Come  on,  now,  say 
anything  you  like,  and  I  won't  mind." 

"Well— how  about— Urn?" 

"I  know  what  I'm  doing!" 

"Yes,  but — see  here !  You  don't  care  a  hang 
for  me,  anyhow.  You  don't  think  very  much 
of  me!" 

"I  do,  too!    I  think  a  lot  I" 

She  looked  at  him  in  a  gay,  provocative 
manner,  stirred  to  the  depths  of  her  by  such  a 
strong,  overpowering  caprice  that  it  almost 
seemed  love. 

Expansively  the  silversmith  answered: 

"Well,  then,  since  we've  got  money  and 
we're  all  alone,  why  don't  we  take  in  a  dance, 
to-night?" 

The  whole  Junoesque  body  of  the  young 
woman — a  true  Madrid  type — trembled  with 
joy.  It  had  been  a  long  time  since  she  had 
had  any  such  amusement;  not  since  her  mar- 
riage had  she  danced,  Zureda,  something  of 


24  THEIR  SON 


a  stick-in-the-mud  and  in  no  wise  given  to 
pleasures,  had  never  wanted  to  take  her  to  any 
dances,  not  even  to  a  masquerade.  A  swarm 
of  joyful  visions  filled  her  memory.  Ah,  those 
happy  Sundays  when  she  had  been  single! 
Saturday  nights,  at  the  shop,  she  and  the 
other  girls  had  made  dates  for  the  next  day. 
Sometimes  they  had  visited  the  dance-halls  at 
Bombilla.  Other  times  they  had  gone  to 
Cuatro  Caminos  or  Ventas  del  Espiritu  Santo. 
And  once  there,  what  laughter  and  what  joy! 
What  strange  emotions  of  half  fear,  half  cu- 
riosity they  had  felt  at  sensing  the  desire  of 
whatever  man  had  asked  them  to  dance! 

Rafaela  straightened  up,  quick,  pliant, 
transfigured. 

"You  aren't  any  more  willing  to  ask  me, 
than  I  am  to  go!"  said  she. 

"Well,  why  not,  then?"  demanded  the  sil- 
versmith. "Let's  go,  right  now!  Let's  take  a 
run  out  to  Bombilla,  and  not  leave  as  long  as 
we've  got  a  cent!" 

The  young  woman  fairly  jumped  for  joy, 
skipped  out  of  the  dining-room,  tied  a  silk 
handkerchief  over  her  head  and  most  fetch- 
ingly  threw  an  embroidered  shawl  over  her 
shoulders.  She  came  back,  immediately.  Her 


THEIR  SON  25 


little  high-heeled,  pointed,  patent-leather 
boots  and  her  fresh-starched,  rustling  petti- 
coats echoed  her  impatience.  She  went  up  to 
Berlanga,  took  him  familiarly  by  the  arm,  and 
said: 

"I  tell  you,  though,  I'm  going  to  pay  half." 

The  silversmith  shook  his  head  in  denial. 
She  added,  positively: 

"That's  the  only  way  I'll  go.  Aren't  we 
both  going  to  have  a  good  time?  That's  fair, 
for  us  both  to  pay  half." 

Berlanga  accepted  this  friendly  arrange- 
ment. As  soon  as  they  got  into  the  street  they 
hired  a  carriage.  At  Bombilla  they  had  a 
first-rate  supper  and  danced  their  heads  off, 
till  long  past  midnight.  They  went  home 
afoot,  slowly,  arm  in  arm.  Rafaela  had  drunk 
a  bit  too  much,  and  often  had  to  stop.  Dizzy, 
she  leaned  her  head  on  the  silversmith's  breast. 
Manolo,  himself  a  bit  tipsy  and  out  of  con- 
trol, devoured  her  with  his  eyes. 

"Say,  you're  a  peach!"  he  murmured. 

"Am  I,  really?" 

"Strike  me  blind  if  you're  not!  Pretty,  eh? 
More  than  that !  You're  a  wonder — oh,  great ! 
The  best  I  ever  saw,  and  I've  seen  a  lot!" 

She  still  had  enough  wit  left  to  pretend  not 


26  THEIR   SON 


to  hear  him,  playing  she  was  ill.     She  stam- 
mered: 

"Oh,  I— I'm  so  sick!" 
Suddenly  Berlanga  exclaimed: 

"If  Zureda  and  I  weren't  pals " 

Silence.  The  silversmith  added,  warming 
to  the  subject: 

"Rafaela,  tell  me  the  truth.  Isn't  it  true 
that  Amadeo  stands  in  our  way?" 

She  peered  closely  at  him,  and  afterward 
raised  her  handkerchief  to  her  eyes.  She  gave 
him  no  other  answer.  And  nothing  more  hap- 
pened, just  then. 

During  the  monotonous  passage  of  a  few 
more  days,  Manolo  Berlanga  gradually  real- 
ized that  Rafaela  had  big,  expressive  eyes, 
small  feet  with  high  insteps  and  a  most  pleas- 
ant walk.  He  noted  that  her  breasts  were 
firm  and  full;  and  he  even  thought  he  could 
detect  in  her  an  extremely  coquettish  desire 
to  appear  attractive  in  his  eyes.  At  the  end 
of  it  all,  the  silversmith  fully  understood  his 
own  intentions,  which  caused  him  both  joy  and 
fear. 

"She's  got  me  going,"  he  thought.    "She's 


THEIR   SON  27 


certainly  got  me  going!  Say,  I'm  crazy  about 
that  woman!" 

At  last,  one  evening,  the  ill-restrained  pas- 
sion of  the  man  burst  into  an  overwhelming 
torrent.  On  that  very  night,  Zureda  was  go- 
ing to  come  home.  Hardly  had  Manolo  Ber- 
langa  left  the  shop  when  he  hurried  to  his 
lodgings.  He  had  no  more  than  reached  the 
front  room  when — no  longer  able  to  restrain 
his  evil  thoughts — he  asked: 

"Has  Amadeo  got  here,  yet?" 

"He'll  be  here  in  about  fifteen  minutes,"  an- 
swered Rafaela.  "It's  nine  o'clock,  now.  The 
train's  already  in.  I  heard  it  whistle." 

Berlanga  entered  the  dining-room  and  saw 
that  the  young  woman  was  making  up  his 
bed.  He  approached  her. 

"Want  any  help?"  he  asked. 

"No,  thanks!" 

Suddenly,  without  knowing  what  he  was 
about,  he  grabbed  her  round  the  waist.  She 
tried  to  defend  herself,  turning  away,  pushing 
him  from  her.  But,  kissing  her  desperately, 
he  murmured : 

"Come  now,  quick,  quick — before  he  gets 
here!" 


28  THEIR   SON 


Then,  after  a  brief  moment  of  silent  strug- 


"Darling!  Don't  you  see?  It  had  to  be  this 
way !" 

The  wife  of  Zureda  did  not,  in  fact,  put  up 
much  of  a  fight. 

A  year  later,  Rafaela  gave  birth  to  a  boy. 
Manolo  Berlanga  stood  godfather  for  it.  Both 
Rafaela  and  Amadeo  agreed  on  naming  it 
Manolo  Amadeo  Zureda.  The  baptism  was 
very  fine;  they  spent  more  than  two  thousand 
reals  *  on  it. 

How  pink-and- white,  how  joyous,  how 
pretty  was  little  Manolin!  The  engineer,  con- 
gratulated by  everybody,  wept  with  joy. 

*  About  $  100. 


Ill 


LITTLE  Manolo  was  nearly  three 
years  old.  He  had  developed  into  a 
very  cunning  chap,  talkative  and 
pleasant.  In  his  small,  plump,  white 
face,  that  looked  even  whiter  by  contrast  with 
the  dead  black  of  his  hair,  you  could  see  dis- 
tinctive characteristics  of  several  persons.  His 
tip-tilted  nose  and  the  roguish  line  of  his 
mouth  were  his  mother's.  From  his  father, 
no  doubt,  he  had  inherited  the  thoughtful  fore- 
head and  the  heavy  set  of  his  jaws.  And  at 
the  same  time  you  were  reminded  of  his  god- 
father by  his  lively  ways  and  by  a  peculiar 
manner  he  had  of  throwing  out  his  feet,  when 
he  walked.  It  seemed  almost  as  if  the  clever 
little  fellow  had  set  his  mind  on  looking  like 
everybody  who  had  stood  near  his  baptismal 
font,  so  that  he  could  win  the  love  of  them  all. 
Zureda  worshiped  the  boy,  laughed  at  all 
his  tricks  and  graces,  and  spent  hours  play- 
ing with  him  on  the  tiles  of  the  passageway. 
Little  Manolo  pulled  his  mustache  and  neck- 

29 


80  THEIR   SON 


tie,  mauled  him  and  broke  the  crystal  of  his 
watch.  Far  from  getting  angry,  the  engineer 
loved  him  all  the  more  for  it,  as  if  his  strong, 
rough  heart  were  melting  with  adoration. 

One  evening  Rafaela  went  down  to  the  sta- 
tion to  say  good-by  to  her  husband,  who  was 
taking  out  the  7.05  express.  In  her  arms  she 
carried  the  boy.  Pedro,  the  fireman,  looked 
out  of  the  cab,  and  made  both  the  mother  and 
son  laugh  by  pulling  all  sorts  of  funny  faces. 

"Here's  the  toothache  face!"  he  announced. 
"And  here's  the  stomach-ache  face!" 

Then  the  bell  rang,  and  they  heard  the  vi- 
brant whistle  of  the  station-master. 

"Here,  give  me  the  boy!"  cried  Zureda. 

He  wanted  to  kiss  him  good-by.  The  lit- 
tle fellow  stretched  out  his  tiny  arms  to  his 
father. 

"Take  me!  Take  me,  papa!"  he  entreated 
with  a  lisping  tongue,  his  words  full  of  love 
and  charm. 

Poor  Zureda!  The  idea  of  leaving  the  boy, 
at  that  moment,  stabbed  him  to  the  heart.  He 
could  not  bear  to  let  him  go;  he  could  not! 
Hardly  knowing  what  he  was  about,  he  pressed 
the  youngster  to  his  breast  with  one  hand,  and 
with  the  other  eased  open  the  throttle.  The 


THEIR   SON  31 


train  started.  Raf  aela,  terrified,  ran  along  the 
platform,  screaming: 

"Give  him,  give  him  to  me!" 

But  already,  even  though  Zureda  had 
wanted  to  give  him  back,  it  was  too  late. 
Rafaela  ran  to  the  end  of  the  platform,  and 
there  she  had  to  stop.  Pedro  laughed  and 
gesticulated  from  the  blackness  of  the  tender, 
bidding  her  farewell. 

The  young  woman  went  back  home,  in 
tears.  Manolo  Berlanga  had  just  got  home. 
He  had  been  drinking  and  was  in  the  devil's 
own  humor. 

"Well,  what's  up  now?"  he  demanded. 

Inconsolable,  sobbing,  Rafaela  told  him 
what  had  happened. 

"Is  that  all?"  interrupted  the  silversmith. 
"Say,  you're  crazy!  If  he's  gone,  so  much  the 
better.  Now  he'll  leave  us  in  peace,  a  little 
while.  Damn  good  thing  if  he  never  came 
back!" 

Then  he  demanded  supper. 

"Come,  now,"  he  added,  "cut  out  that  sniv- 
eling! Give  me  something  to  eat.  I'm  in  a 
hurry!" 

Rafaela  began  to  light  the  fire.  But  all  the 
time  she  kept  on  crying  and  scolding.  Her 


82  THEIR  SON 


rage  and  grief  dragged  out  into  an  intermin- 
able monologue: 

"My  darling — my  baby — this  is  a  great 
note!  Think  of  that  man  taking  him  away, 
like  thatl  The  little  angel  will  get  his  death 
o'  cold.  What  a  fool,  what  an  idiot  I  And 
then  they  talk  about  the  way  women  act!  My 
precious!  What'll  I  do,  thinking  about  how 
cold  he'll  be,  to-night?  My  baby,  my  heart's 
blood — my  precious  little  sweetheart !" 

In  her  anger  she  tipped  over  the  bottle  of 
olive-oil.  It  fell  off  the  stove  and  smashed  on 
the  floor.  The  rage  of  the  woman  became 
frenzied. 

"Damn  my  soul  if  I  know  what  I'm  doing!" 
she  screeched.  "Oh,  that  dirty  husband  of 
mine!  I  hope  to  God  I  never  see  him  again. 
And  now,  how  am  I  going  to  cook?  I'll  have 
to  go  down  to  the  store.  Say,  I  wish  I'd  never 
been  born.  We'd  all  be  a  lot  better  off!  To 
Hell  with  such  a " 

"Say,  are  you  going  to  keep  that  rough- 
house  up  all  night?"  demanded  the  silversmith. 
Tired  of  hearing  her  noise,  he  had  walked 
slowly  into  the  kitchen.  Now  he  stood  there, 
black-faced,  with  his  fists  doubled  up  in  the 
pockets  of  his  jacket. 


THEIR  SON  33 


"I'll  keep  it  up  as  long  as  I'm  a  mind  to  1" 
she  retorted.  "What  are  you  going  to  do 
about  it?" 

"You  shut  your  jaw,"  vociferated  Berlanga, 
"or  I'll  break  it  for  you!" 

Then  his  rage  burst  out.  Joining  a  bad  act 
to  an  evil  threat,  he  rained  a  volley  of  blows 
on  the  head  of  his  mistress.  Rafaela  stopped 
crying,  and  through  her  gritted  teeth  spat  out 
a  flood  of  vile  epithets. 

"You  dirty  dog!"  she  cried.  "You  pimp! 
All  you  know  how  to  do  is  hang  around 
women.  Coward !  Sissy !  The  only  part  of  a 
man  you've  got  is  your  face!" 

He  growled: 

"TakeL  that,  and  that,  you  sow!" 

The  disgusting  scene  lasted  a  long  time. 
Terrified,  the  woman  stopped  her  noise,  and 
fought.  Soon  her  nose  and  mouth  were 
streaming  blood.  In  the  kitchen  resounded  a 
confused  tumult  of  blows  and  kicks,  as  the  sil- 
versmith drove  his  victim  into  a  corner  and 
beat  her  up.  After  the  sorry  job  was  done, 
Berlanga  cleared  out  and  never  came  back 
till  one  or  two  in  the  morning.  Then  he  went 
to  his  room  and  turned  in  without  making  a 
light,  no  doubt  ashamed  of  Jjis  cowardly  deed. 


34  THEIE  SON 


For  a  while  he  tried  to  excuse  himself. 
After  all,  thought  he,  the  whole  blame  wasn't 
his.  Rafaela's  tirade  and  the  wine  he  himself 
had  drunk,  had  been  more  than  half  at  fault. 
Men,  he  reflected,  certainly  do  become  brutes 
when  they  drink. 

The  young  woman  was  in  her  bedroom. 
From  time  to  time,  Berlanga  heard  her  sigh 
deeply.  Her  sighs  were  long  and  tremulous, 
like  those  of  a  child  still  troubled  in  its  dreams 
after  having  cried  itself  to  sleep. 

The  silversmith  exclaimed: 

"Oh,  Rafaela!" 

He  had  to  call  her  twice  more.  At  last,  in 
a  kind  of  groan,  the  young  woman  answered : 

"Well,  what  do  you  want?" 

Slyly  and  proudly  the  silversmith  grinned 
to  himself.  That  question  of  hers  practically 
amounted  to  forgiveness.  The  sweet  moment 
of  reconciliation  was  close  at  hand. 

"Come  here!"  he  ordered. 

Another  pause  followed,  during  which  the 
will  of  the  man  and  of  the  woman  seemed  to 
meet  and  struggle,  with  strange  magnetism,  in 
the  stillness  of  the  dark  house. 

"Come,  girl  J"  repeated  the  smith,  softening 
Jiis  vpicef 


THEIR   SON  35 


Then  he  added,  after  a  moment : 

"Well,  don't  you  want  to  come?" 

Another  minute  passed ;  for  all  women,  even 
the  simplest  and  most  ignorant,  know  to  per- 
fection the  magic  secret  of  making  a  man  wait 
for  them.  But  after  a  little  while,  Berlanga 
heard  Rafaela's  bare  feet  paddling  along  the 
hall.  The  young  woman  reached  the  bedroom 
of  the  silversmith,  and  in  the  shadows  her  ex- 
ploring hands  met  the  hands  that  Manolo  was 
stretching  out  to  greet  her. 

"What  do  you  want,  anyhow?"  she  de- 
manded, humble  yet  resentful. 

"Come  to  bed!" 

She  obeyed.  Many  kisses  sounded,  given 
her  by  the  smith.  After  a  while  the  man's 
voice  asked  in  an  endearing  yet  overmastering 
way: 

"Now,  then,  are  you  going  to  be  good?" 

Amadeo  Zureda  came  back  a  couple  of  days 
later,  eminently  well  pleased.  His  boy  had 
played  the  part  of  a  regular  little  man  during 
the  whole  run.  He  had  never  cried,  but  had 
eaten  whatever  they  had  given  him  and  had 
slept  like  a  top,  on  the  coal.  When  Zureda 


36  THEIR   SON 


kissed  his  wife,  he  noticed  that  she  had  a  black- 
and-blue  spot  on  her  forehead. 

"That  looks  like  somebody  had  hit  you," 
said  he.  "Have  you  been  fighting  with  any 
one?" 

She  hesitated,  then  answered: 

"No,  no.  Why,  who'd  I  be  fighting  with? 
Much  less  coming  to  blows?  The  night  you 
left,  the  oil-bottle  fell  off  the  sideboard,  and 
when  I  went  to  pick  it  up  I  got  this  bump." 

"How  about  that  big  scratch,  there?" 

"Which  one?  Oh,  you  mean  on  my  lip?  I 
did  that  with  a  pin." 

"That's  too  bad!  Take  care  of  yourself, 
little  lady!" 

Manolo  Berlanga  was  there  and  heard  all 
this.  He  had  to  bite  his  mustache  to  hide  a 
wicked  laugh;  but  the  engineer  saw  nothing 
at  all.  The  poor  man  suspected  nothing.  He 
remained  quite  blind.  Even  if  he  had  not 
loved  Rafaela,  his  adoration  of  the  boy  would 
have  been  enough  to  fill  his  eyes  with  dust. 


1V3 


TRUTH,  however,  is  mighty  and  will 
prevail.  After  a  while  Zureda  be- 
gan to  observe  that  something  odd 
was  going  on  about  him.  Slowly 
and  without  knowing  why,  he  found  a  sort  of 
distance  separating  him  from  his  companions, 
who  treated  him  and  looked  at  him  in  a  new 
way.  You  would  almost  have  said  they  were 
trying  to  extort  from  his  eyes  the  confession 
of  some  risque  secret  he  was  doubtless  keeping 
well  covered  up  and  hidden ;  a  secret  everybody 
knew.  A  complex  sentiment  of  curiosity  and 
silence  isolated  him  from  his  friends  and 
seemed  to  befog  him  with  inexplicable  ridicule. 
After  a  while  he  grew  much  puzzled  by  this 
phenomenon. 

"I  wonder  if  I've  changed?"  thought  he. 
"Maybe  I'm  sick,  without  knowing  it.  Or  can 
It  be  that  I'm  mighty  ugly,  and  nobody  dares 
to  tell  me  so?" 

Not  far  from  the  station,  and  near  Man- 
zanares  Street,  there  was  an  eating-house 

97 


38  THEIR  SON 


where  the  porters,  engineers  and  firemen  were 
wont  to  foregather.  This  establishment  be- 
longed to  Senor  Tomas,  who  in  his  youth  had 
been  a  toreador.  The  aplomb  and  force,  as 
well  as  the  stout-heartedness  of  that  brave, 
gay  profession  still  remained  his.  Senor 
Tomas  talked  very  little,  and  for  those  who 
knew  him  well  his  words  had  the  authority  of 
print.  He  was  a  tall  old  fellow,  with  power- 
ful hands  and  shoulders;  he  wore  velveteen 
trousers  and  little  Andalusian  jackets  of  black 
stuff;  and  over  the  sash  with  which  he  masked 
his  growing  girth  he  strapped  a  wide  leather 
belt  with  a  silver  buckle. 

One  evening  Senor  Tomas  was  enjoying  the 
air  at  the  door  of  his  eating-house  when  Zu- 
reda  passed  by.  The  tavern-keeper  beckoned 
the  engineer;  and  when  Zureda  had  come 
near,  looked  fixedly  into  his  eyes  and  said: 

"You  and  I  have  got  to  have  a  few  words." 

Zureda  remained  dumb.  The  secret,  chill 
vibration  of  an  evil  presentiment  had  passed 
like  a  cold  wind  through  his  heart.  Presently 
recovering  speech,  he  answered: 

"Any  time  you  say  so." 

They  reentered  the  tavern,  which  just  then 
was  almost  without  patrons.  A  high  wooden 


THEIR  SON  39 


shelf,  painted  red  and  covered  with  bottles,  ran 
about  the  room.  On  the  wall  was  hung  the 
stuffed  head  of  the  bull  that  had  given  Sefior 
Tomas  the  tremendous  gash  which  had  torn 
his  leg  open  and  had  obliged  him  to  lay  aside 
forever  the  garb  of  a  toreador.  At  the  rear, 
the  bartender  had  fallen  asleep  behind  the  pol- 
ished bar,  on  which  a  little  fountain  of  water 
was  playing  its  perpetual  music. 

The  two  men  sat  down  at  a  big  table,  and 
the  tavern-keeper  clapped  his  hands  together. 

"Hey  you,  there  1"  he  cried. 

The  bartender  woke  up  and  came  to  him. 

"What'll  you  have?"  asked  he. 

"Bring  some  olives  and  two  cups  of  wine." 

A  long  pause  followed.  Senor  Tomas  with 
voracious  pulls  at  his  smoldering  cigar  set 
its  tip  glowing.  A  kind  of  gloomy  preoccupa- 
tion hardened  his  close-shaven  face — a  face 
that  showed  itself  bronzed  and  fleshy  beneath 
the  white  hair  grandly  combed  and  curled  upon 
his  forehead. 

Presently  he  began: 

"I  hate  to  see  two  men  fight,  because  if 
they're  spirited  it's  bound  to  be  serious.  But 
still  I  can't  bear  to  see  a  good  man  and  a  hard- 


40  THEIR   SON 


working  man  be  made  a  laughing-stock  for 
everybody.  Get  me?" 

Amadeo  Zureda  first  grew  pale  and  then 
red.  Yes,  he  knew  something  was  up.  The 
old  man  had  called  him  to  tell  him  some  ter- 
rible mystery.  He  felt  that  the  strange  feel- 
ing of  vacancy  all  about  him,  which  he  had 
been  sensing  for  some  time,  was  at  last  going 
to  be  explained.  He  trembled.  Something 
black,  something  vast  was  closing  over  his 
head ;  it  might  be  one  of  those  fearful  tragedies 
that  sometimes  cut  a  human  life  in  twain. 

"I  don't  know  how  to  talk,  and  I  don't  like 
to  talk,"  went  on  the  tavern-keeper.  "That's 
why  I  don't  beat  round  the  bush,  but  I  call  a 
spade  a  spade.  Yes,  sir,  I  call  things  by  their 
right  names.  Because  in  this  world,  Amadeo 
^— you  mark  my  words — everything's  got  a 
name." 

"That's  so,  Senor  Tomas." 

"All  right.  And  I'm  one  of  those  fellows 
that  go  right  after  the  truth  the  way  I  used 
to  go  after  the  bull — go  the  quickest  way, 
which  is  the  best  way,  because  it's  the  short- 
est." 

"That's  right,  too." 

"Well,    then,     I  like  you  first-rate,  Arna- 


THEIR  SON  41 


deo.  I  know  you're  a  worker,  and  I  know 
you're  one  of  those  honest  men  that  wouldn't 
stand  for  any  crooked  work  to  turn  a  dollar. 
And  I  know,  too,  you're  a  man  that  knows 
how  to  use  his  fists  and  how  to  run  up  the 
battle-flag  of  the  soul,  when  you  have  to.  I'm 
sure  of  all  this.  And  by  the  same  token,  I 
won't  let  anybody  make  fun  of  you. 

"Thanks,  Sefior  Tomas." 

"All  right!  Now,  then,  in  my  house,  right 
here,  people  are  saying  your  wife  is  thick  with 
Manolo  Berlanga!" 

The  eyes  of  the  tavern-keeper  and  the  engi- 
neer met.  They  remained  fixed,  so,  a  moment. 
Then  the  eyes  of  Zureda  opened  wide,  seemed 
starting  from  their  sockets.  Suddenly  he 
jumped  up,  and  his  square  finger-nails  fairly 
sank  into  the  wood  of  the  table.  His  white 
lips,  slavering,  stammered  in  a  fit  of  rage: 

"That's  a  lie,  a  damned  lie,  Sefior  Tomas! 
I'll  cut  your  heart  out  for  that!  Yes,  if  the 
Virgin  herself  came  down  and  told  me  that, 
I'd  cut  her  heart  out,  too!  God,  what  a  lie!" 

The  tavern-keeper  remained  entirely  self- 
possessed.  Without  even  a  change  of  expres- 
sion he  answered: 

"All  right!    Find  out  what's  true  or  false 


42  THEIE   SON 


in  this  business.  For  you  know  there's  no  dif- 
ference between  the  truth  and  a  lie  that  every- 
body's telling.  And  if  you  decide  there's  noth- 
ing to  this  except  what  I  say,  come  and  tell 
me,  for  I'm  right  here  and  everywhere  to  back 
up  my  words!" 

The  tavern-keeper  grew  silent,  and  Amadeo 
Zureda  remained  motionless,  struck  senseless, 
gaping. 

After  a  few  minutes  his  ideas  began  to  calm 
down  again,  and  as  they  grew  quiet  they  co- 
ordinated themselves ;  then  the  engineer  felt  an 
unwholesome  and  resistless  curiosity  to  know 
everything,  to  torture  himself  digging  out  de- 
tails. 

"You  mean  to  tell  me,"  asked  he,  "that 
they've  talked  about  that,  right  here?" 

"Right  on  the  spot,  sirl" 

"When?" 

"More  than  once,  and  more  than  twenty 
times ;  and  they  say  worse  than  that,  too.  They 
say  Berlanga  beats  your  wife,  and  you're  wise 
to  everything,  and  have  been  from  the  begin- 
ning. And  they  say  you  stand  for  it,  to  have 
a  good  thing,  because  this  Berlanga  fellow 
helps  you  pay  the  rent." 

A  couple  of  porters  came  in,  and  interrupted 


THEIE  SON  43 


the  conversation.  Sefior  Tomas  ended  up 
with: 

"Well  now,  you  know  all  about  it!" 

When  Zureda  left  the  tavern,  his  first  im- 
pulse was  to  go  home  and  put  it  up  to  Raf  aela. 
Either  with  soft  words  or  with  a  stick  he  might 
get  something  about  Berlanga  out  of  her.  But 
presently  he  changed  his  mind.  Affairs  of 
this  kind  can't  be  hurried  much.  It  is  better 
to  go  slow,  to  wait,  to  get  information  bit  by 
bit  and  all  by  one's  self.  When  he  reached  the 
station  it  was  six  o'clock.  He  met  Pedro  on 
the  platform. 

"Which  engine  have  we  got  to-day?"  asked 
Amadeo. 

"Nigger,"  answered  the  fireman. 

"The  devil!    It  just  had  to  be  her,  eh?" 

That  run  was  terrible  indeed,  packed  full 
of  inward  struggles  and  of  battles  with  the 
rebellious  locomotive — an  infernal  run  that 
Zureda  remembered  all  his  life. 

With  due  regard  for  the  prudent  scheme 
that  he  had  mapped  out,  the  engineer  set  him- 
self to  observing  the  way  his  wife  and  Manolo 
had  of  talking  to  each  other.  After  greatly 
straining  his  attention,  he  could  find  nothing 
in  the  cordial  frankness  of  their  relations  that 


44  THEIE   SON 


seemed  to  pass  the  limits  of  good  friendship. 
From  the  time  when  Berlanga  had  stood  god- 
father for  little  Manolo,  Amadeo  had  begged 
them  to  use  "thee"  and  "thou"  to  each  other, 
and  this  they  had  done.  But  this  familiarity 
seemed  quite  brother-and-sisterly ;  it  seemed 
justified  by  the  three  years  they  had  been  liv- 
ing in  the  same  house,  and  could  hardly  be 
suspected  of  hiding  any  guilty  secret. 

None  the  less,  the  jealousy  of  Zureda  kept 
on  growing,  rooting  itself  in  every  pretext, 
and  using  even  the  most  minor  thing  to  in- 
flame and  color  with  vampire  suspicion  every 
thought  of  the  engineer.  The  notion  kept 
growing  in  Zureda;  it  became  an  obsession 
which  made  him  see  the  dreaded  vision  con- 
stantly, just  as  through  another  obsession,  Ber- 
langa's  desire  for  Rafaela  had  been  born. 

At  last  Amadeo  became  convinced  that  his 
skill  as  a  spy  was  very  poor.  He  lacked  that 
astuteness,  those  powers  of  deception  and  that 
divining  instinct  which,  in  a  kind  of  second 
sight,  makes  some  men  get  swiftly  and  directly 
at  the  bottom  of  things.  In  view  of  his  blunt 
character,  unfitted  for  any  kind  of  diplomatic 
craft,  he  thought  it  better  to  confront  the  mat- 
ter face  to  face, 


THEIR   SON  45 


As  soon  as  he  had  come  by  this  resolution, 
his  uneasiness  grew  calm.  A  sedative  feeling 
of  peace  took  possession  of  his  heart.  The 
engineer  passed  that  day  quietly  reading,  wait- 
ing for  night  to  come.  Rafaela  was  sewing  in 
the  dining-room,  with  little  Manolo  asleep  on 
her  lap.  Half  an  hour  before  supper,  Zureda 
tiptoed  to  their  bedroom  and  took  from  the 
little  night-table  his  heavy-bladed,  horn-han- 
dled hunting  knife — the  knife  he  always  car- 
ried on  his  runs.  After  that  he  put  on  a  flat 
cap,  tied  a  muffler  round  his  neck — for  the 
evening  was  cold — and  started  to  leave  the 
house.  In  the  emptiness  of  the  hallway  his 
heavy,  determined  footfalls,  echoing,  seemed  to 
waken  something  deadly. 

A  bit  surprised,  Rafaela  asked: 
"Aren't  you  going  to  eat  supper  here?" 
"Yes,"  he  answered,  "but  I'm  just  going 
out  to  stretch  my  legs  a  little.     I'll  be  right 
back." 

He  kissed  his  wife  and  the  boy,  mentally 
taking  a  long  farewell  of  them,  and  went  out. 
In  Sefior  Tomas'  tavern  he  found  Manolo 
Berlanga  playing  tute  with  several  friends. 
The  silversmith  was  drunk,  and  his  arrogant, 
defiant  voice  dominated  the  others.  Slowly, 


46  THEIR   SON 


with  a  careless  and  taciturn  air,  the  engineer 
approached  the  group. 

"Good  evening,  all,"  said  he. 

At  first,  no  one  answered  him,  for  every- 
body's attention  was  fixed  on  the  wayward 
come-and-go  of  the  cards.  When  the  game 
was  done,  one  of  the  players  exclaimed: 

"Hello  there,  Amadeo!  I  didn't  see  you! 
But  I  saw  your  wife  and  kid  yesterday.  Some 
boy!  And  that's  a  pretty  woman  you've  got, 
too.  I  don't  say  that  just  because  you're  here. 
It's  true.  Anybody  can  see  you  make  all  kinds 
of  money,  and  spend  it  all  on  your  wife!" 

"Yes,  and  if  he  didn't,"  put  in  Berlanga, 
offering  Zureda  a  glass  of  wine,  "there'd  be 
plenty  more  who  would.  How  about  that, 
Amadeo?" 

Zureda  remained  impassive.  He  gulped  the 
wine  at  one  swallow.  Then  he  ordered  a  bot- 
tle for  all  hands. 

"Come  on,  now,  I'll  go  you  a  game  of  mus" 
he  challenged  Berlanga.  "Antolin,  here,  will 
be  my  partner." 

The  silversmith  accepted. 

"Go  to  it!"  said  he. 

The  players  all  sat  down  around  the  table, 
and  the  game  began. 


THEIR   SON  47 


"I'll  open  up." 

"Pass." 

"Ill  stay  in." 

"I'm  out." 

"I'll  stick." 

"I'll  raise  that!" 

"I  renig!" 

Now  and  then  the  players  stopped  for  a 
drink,  and  a  few  daring  bets  brought  out 
bursts  of  laughter. 

"Whose  deal,  now?" 

"Mine!" 

All  at  once  Amadeo,  who  was  looking  for 
some  excuse  to  get  into  a  row  with  the  silver- 
smith, cheated  openly  and  took  the  pot. 
Manolo  saw  him  cheat.  Incensed,  he  threw 
his  cards  on  the  floor. 

"Here  now,  that  don't  go!"  he  cried.  "I 
don't  care  if  we  are  friends,  you  can't  get 
away  with  that!" 

All  the  other  players,  angered,  backed  up 
the  silversmith. 

"No,  sir!  No,  that  don't  go,  here!"  they 
echoed. 

Very  quietly  the  engineer  demanded: 

"Well,  what  have  I  done?" 

"You   threw  away   this   card,  the  five  o' 


48  THEIR   SON 


clubs,"  replied  Berlanga,  "and  slipped  your- 
self a  king,  that  you  needed!  That's  all. 
You're  cheating!" 

The  engineer  answered  the  furious  insult  of 
the  silversmith  with  a  blow  in  the  face.  They 
tackled  each  other  like  a  couple  of  cats.  Chairs 
and  table  rolled  on  the  floor.  Senor  Tomas 
came  running,  and  he  and  the  other  players 
succeeded  in  separating  them.  A  crowd,  at- 
tracted by  the  noise  of  the  fight,  gathered  like 
magic.  The  tumult  of  these  curiosity- seekers 
helped  Amadeo  hide  his  words  as  he  and 
Manolo  left  the  tavern.  He  said  in  his  com- 
panion's ear: 

"I'll  be  waiting  for  you  in  front  of  San  An- 
tonio de  la  Florida." 

"Suits  me!" 

And,  a  few  minutes  later,  they  met  at  the 
indicated  spot. 

"Let's  go  where  nobody  can  see  us,"  said 
the  engineer. 

"I'll  go  anywhere  you  like,"  answered  Ber- 
langa. "Lead  the  way!" 

They  crossed  the  river  and  came  to  the  little 
fields  out  at  Fuente  de  la  Teja.  The  shadows 
were  thicker  there,  under  the  trees.  At  a 
likely-looking  spot  the  two  men  stopped.  Zu- 


THEIR   SON  49 


reda  peered  all  about  him.  His  eyes,  used  to 
penetrating  dark  horizons,  seemed  to  grow 
calm.  The  two  men  were  all  alone. 

"I've  brought  you  here,"  said  the  engineer, 
"either  to  kill  you  or  have  you  kill  me." 

Berlanga  was  pretty  tipsy.  Brave  in  his 
cups,  he  peered  closely  at  the  other.  He  kept 
his  hands  in  the  pockets  of  his  coat.  His  brow 
was  frowning;  his  chin  was  thrust  out  and  ag- 
gressive. He  had  already  guessed  what  Zu- 
reda  was  going  to  ask  him,  and  the  idea  of 
being  catechized  revolted  his  pride. 

"It  looks  to  me,"  he  swaggered,  "like  you 
and  I  were  going  to  have  a  few  words." 

And  immediately  he  added,  as  if  he  could 
read  the  thought  of  Zureda: 

"They've  been  telling  you  I'm  thick  with 
Rafaela,  and  you're  after  the  facts." 

"Yes,  that's  it,"  answered  the  engineer. 

"Well,  they  aren't  lying.  What's  the  use  of 
lying?  It's  so,  all  right." 

Then  he  held  his  peace  and  looked  at  Zu- 
reda. The  engineer's  eyes  were  usually  big 
and  black,  but  now  by  some  strange  miracle 
of  rage  they  had  become  small  and  red. 
Neither  man  made  any  further  speech.  There 
was  no  need  of  any.  All  the  words  they  might 


50  THEIR   SON 


have  hurled  at  each  other  would  have  been 
futile.  Zureda  recoiled  a  few  steps  and  un- 
sheathed his  knife.  The  silversmith  snicked 
open  a  big  pocket  blade. 

They  fell  violently  on  each  other.  It  was  a 
prehistoric  battle,  body  to  body,  savage,  silent. 
Manolo  was  killed.  He  fell  on  his  back,  his 
face  white,  his  mouth  twisted  in  an  unforget- 
table grimace  of  pain  and  hate. 

The  engineer  ran  away  and  was  already 
crossing  the  bridge,  when  a  woman  who  had 
been  following  him  at  a  short  distance  began 
to  cry: 

"Catch  him!  Catch  him!  He's  just  killed 
a  man!" 

A  couple  of  policemen,  at  the  door  of  an 
inn,  stopped  Zureda.  They  arrested  him  and 
handcuffed  him.  He  made  no  resistance. 

Rafaela  went  to  see  him  in  jail.  The  engi- 
neer, because  of  his  love  for  her  and  for  the 
boy,  received  her  with  affection.  He  assured 
her  he  had  got  into  a  fight  with  Manolo  over 
a  card-game.  Fourteen  or  fifteen  months 
later  he  maintained  the  same  story,  in  court. 
He  claimed  he  and  Manolo  had  been  playing 
musf  and  that  by  way  of  a  joke  on  his  friends 
he  had  thrown  away  one  of  the  cards  in  H!s 


THEIR  SON  51 


hand  and  slipped  himself  another.  Then  he 
said  Berlanga  had  denounced  him  as  a  cheat; 
they  had  quarreled,  and  had  challenged  each 
other. 

Thus  spoke  Amadeo  Zureda,  in  his  chivalric 
attempt  not  to  throw  even  the  lightest  shadow 
on  the  good  name  of  the  woman  he  adored. 
Who  could  have  acted  more  nobly  than  he? 
The  state's  attorney  arraigned  him  in  crush- 
ing terms,  implacably. 

And  the  judge  gave  him  twenty  years  at 
hard  labor. 


V 


SCOURGED  by  poverty,  which  was 
not  long  in  arriving,  Rafaela  had  to 
move  away  to  a  little  village  of  Cas- 
tile, where  she  had  relatives.  These 
were  poor  farming  people,  making  a  hard  fight 
for  existence.  By  way  of  excuse  for  her  coming 
to  them,  the  young  woman  made  up  a  story. 
She  said  that  Amadeo  had  got  into  some  kind 
of  trouble  with  his  employers,  had  been  dis- 
charged and  had  gone  to  Argentina,  for  there 
he  had  heard  engineers  got  excellent  pay. 
After  that,  she  had  decided  to  leave  Madrid, 
where  food  and  lodging  were  very  dear.  She 
ended  her  tale  judiciously: 

"As  soon  as  I  hear  from  Amadeo  that  he's 
got  a  good  job,  I'm  going  out  there  to  him." 

Her  relatives  believed  her,  took  pity  on  her 
and  found  her  work.  Every  day,  with  the 
first  light  of  morning,  Rafaela  went  down  to 
the  river  to  wash.  The  river  was  about  half 
a  kilometer  from  the  little  village.  By  wash- 
ing and  ironing,  at  times,  or  again  by  picking 

62 


THEIR  SON  53 


up  wood  in  the  country  and  selling  it,  Raf  aela 
managed,  with  hard,  persistent  toil,  to  make 
four  or  five  reals  *  a  day. 

Two  years  passed.  By  this  time  the  neigh- 
bors were  beginning  to  find  out  from  the  mail- 
carrier  that  the  addresses  on  all  the  letters 
coming  to  Rafaela  were  written  by  the  same 
hand  and  all  bore  the  postmark  of  Ceuta. 
This  news  got  about  and  set  things  buzzing. 
The  young  woman  put  an  end  to  folks'  gossip 
by  very  sensibly  confessing  the  truth  that 
Amadeo  was  in  prison  there.  She  said  a  gam- 
bling-scrape had  got  him  into  trouble.  In  her 
confession  she  adopted  a  resigned  and  humble 
manner,  like  a  model  wife  who,  in  spite  of  hav- 
ing suffered  much,  nevertheless  forgives  the 
man  she  loves,  and  pardons  all  the  wrongs 
done  her.  People  called  her  unfortunate. 
They  tattled  a  while,  and  then  took  pity  on 
her  and  accepted  her. 

Worn  out  by  time  and  hardships,  her  former 
beauty — piquant  in  a  way,  though  a  bit  com- 
mon— soon  faded  away.  The  sun  tanned  her 
skin;  the  dust  of  the  country  roads  got  into 
her  hair,  once  so  clean  and  wavy;  hard  work 
toughened  and  deformed  her  hands,  which  in 

*  Twenty  or  twenty-five  cents, 


54  THEIR   SON 


better  days  she  had  well  cared  for.  She  gave 
over  wearing  corsets,  and  this  hastened  the 
ruin  of  her  body.  Slowly  her  breasts  grew 
flaccid,  her  abdomen  bulged,  her  whole  figure 
took  on  heavy  fullnesses.  And  her  clothes,  too, 
bit  by  bit  got  torn  and  spoiled.  Her  petticoats 
and  stockings,  her  neat  patent-leather  boots 
bought  in  happier  days,  disappeared  sadly,  one 
after  the  other.  Rafaela,  who  had  lost  all  de- 
sire to  be  coquettish  or  to  please  men,  let  her- 
self slide  into  poverty;  and,  in  the  end,  she 
sank  so  low  as  to  slop  round  the  village  streets, 
barefooted. 

This  disintegration  of  her  will  coincided  with 
a  serious  loss  and  confusion  of  her  memory. 
The  poor  woman  began  to  forget  everything; 
and  the  few  recollections  she  still  retained 
grew  so  disjointed,  so  vague  that  they  no 
longer  were  able  to  arouse  any  stimulating 
emotion  in  her.  She  had  never  really  loved 
Berlanga.  What  she  had  felt  for  him  had 
been  only  a  kind  of  caprice,  an  unreasoning 
will  o'  the  wisp  passion ;  but  this  amorous  dal- 
liance had  soon  faded  out.  And  the  only 
reason  she  had  kept  on  with  the  silversmith 
had  been  because  she  had  been  afraid  of  him 
and  had  been  weak-willed,  The  smith,  more- 


THEIR   SON  55 


over,  had  become  jealous  and  had  often  beaten 
her.  Thus  his  tragic  death,  far  from  causing 
her  any  grief,  had  come  to  her  as  an  agreeable 
surprise.  It  had  quieted  her,  rested  her,  freed 
her. 

If  the  punishment  of  Zureda  and  his  con- 
finement in  prison  walls  wounded  her  deeply, 
it  was  not  on  account  of  her  broken  love  for 
the  engineer.  No,  rather  was  it  because  this 
disaster  had  disturbed  the  easy,  comfortable 
rhythm  of  her  life  and  because  the  exile  of  her 
husband  had  meant  misery  for  her,  poverty, 
the  irremediable  overthrow  of  her  whole 
future. 

After  the  crisis  which  had  wrecked  her 
home,  Rafaela — hardly  noticing  it,  herself — 
had  grown  stupid,  old  and  of  defective  mem- 
ory. The  many  violent  and  dramatic  shocks 
she  had  borne  in  so  short  a  time  had  annihi- 
lated her  mediocre  spirit.  She  suffered  no  re- 
morse and  had  no  very  clear  idea  as  to  whether 
her  past  conduct  had  been  good  or  bad.  It  was 
as  if  her  conscience  had  sunk  away  into  un- 
thinking stupor.  The  only  thing  that  still  re- 
mained in  her,  unchanged,  was  the  maternal 
instinct  of  living  and  working  for  little  Man- 
olo,  so  that  he,  too,  might  live. 


56  THEIR   SON 


True  enough,  on  certain  days  the  wretched 
woman  drank  deeply  the  cup  of  gall,  as  cer- 
tain memories  returned.  Now  and  then  there 
came  to  her  a  poisoned  vision  of  black  recol- 
lections that  rose  about  her,  stifling  her.  This 
usually  happened  down  at  the  river-bank, 
while  she  was  washing,  at  times  of  mental  ab- 
straction caused  by  her  monotonous  and  purely 
mechanical  toil.  Then  her  eyes  would  fill  with 
tears,  which  slowly  rolled  down  her  cheeks  and 
fell  upon  her  hands,  now  reddened  by  hard  la- 
bor and  the  cold  caress  of  the  water.  The 
other  washwomen,  all  about  her,  observed  her 
grief,  and  fell  to  whispering: 

"See  how  she's  crying?" 

"Poor  thing!" 

"Poor?  Well — it  was  her  own  doing.  Fate 
is  just.  It  gives  everybody  what  they  de- 
serve. Why  didn't  she  look  out  who  she  was 
marrying?" 

From  time  to  time  away  down  at  the  end  of 
the  valley,  shut  in  behind  an  undulating  line 
of  blue  hills,  a  train  passed  by.  Its  strident 
whistle,  enlarged  and  flung  about  hither  and 
yon  by  echoes,  broke  the  silence  of  the  plain. 
Some  few  of  the  younger  washwomen  usually 
sat  up  on  their  heels,  then,  and  followed  with 


THEIB   SON  57 


their  eyes  the  precipitate  on-rushing  of  the 
train.  You  could  behold  a  dreaming  sadness 
in  their  eyes,  a  vision  of  far-off,  unseen  cities. 
But  Rafaela  never  raised  her  head  to  look  at 
the  train.  The  shrieking  whistle  tore  at  her 
ears  with  the  vibration  of  a  familiar  voice.  She 
kept  on  washing,  while  her  tear-wet  eyes 
seemed  to  be  peering  at  the  mysteries  of  for- 
getfulness  in  the  passing  water. 

Despite  the  great  physical  and  moral  de- 
cline of  the  poor  woman,  she  did  not  fail  to 
waken  thoughts  and  hopes  in  a  certain  man. 
To  her  aspired  a  fellow  named  Benjamin,  by 
trade  a  shoemaker.  He  was  already  turning 
fifty  years,  was  a  widower  and  had  two  sons 
in  the  army. 

This  Benjamin's  affairs  went  along  only 
so-so,  because  not  all  the  people  of  the  village 
could  afford  to  wear  shoes,  and  those  who 
could  afford  them  did  not  feel  any  great  need 
of  wearing  fine  or  new  ones.  Rafaela  washed 
and  mended  his  clothes,  and  ironed  a  shirt  for 
him,  every  saint's-day.  He  paid  her  little,  but 
regularly,  for  these  services;  and  gradually 
friendship  grew  up  between  them.  This 
mutual  liking,  which  was  at  first  impersonal 


58  THEIK   SON 


and  calm,  finally  grew  in  the  shoemaker's  heart 
till  it  became  the  fire  of  love. 

"If  you  were  only  willing,"  Senor  Benja- 
min often  said  to  Rafaela,  "we  could  come  to 
an  understanding.  You're  all  alone.  So  am 
I.  Well,  why  not  live  together?" 

She  smiled,  with  that  disillusion  which 
comes  to  a  soul  that  life  has  bit  by  bit  ravaged 
of  all  its  dreams. 

"You're  crazy  to  talk  that  way,  Benjamin," 
she  would  answer. 

"Why?" 

"Oh,  because." 

"Come  now,  explain  that!  Why  am  I 
crazy?" 

Rafaela  did  not  want  to  annoy  the  man,  be- 
cause she  would  thus  lose  a  customer,  and  so 
she  gave  him  an  evasive  answer: 

"Why,  I'm  already  old." 

"Not  for  me!" 

"I'm  ugly!" 

"That's  a  matter  of  taste.  You  suit  me  to 
aT." 

"Thanks.  But,  what  would  people  say? 
And  suppose  we  had  any  children,  Benjamin! 
What  would  they  think  of  us?" 

"Oh,  there's  a  thousand  ways  to  cover  it  all 


THEIR   SON  59 


up.  You  just  take  a  shine  to  me,  and  I'll  fix 
everything  else." 

Raf aela  promised  to  think  it  over ;  and  every 
night  when  she  came  home  from  work,  Benja- 
min jokingly  asked  her,  from  his  door: 

"Well,  neighbor,  how  about  it?" 

"I'm  still  thinking  it  over,"  she  answered, 
with  a  laugh. 

"It  seems  to  be  pretty  hard  for  you  to  de- 
cide." 

"It  surely  is!" 

"Yes,  but  are  you  going  to  get  it  settled?" 

"How  do  I  know,  Benjamin?  Sometimes 
I  think  one  thing,  and  sometimes  another. 
Time  will  tell!" 

But  the  soul  of  Raf  aela  lay  dead.  Nothing 
could  revive  her  illusions.  The  shoemaker, 
after  many  efforts,  had  to  give  her  up.  And 
always  after  that,  when  he  saw  her  pass  along, 
he  would  heave  a  sigh  in  an  absurd,  romantic 
manner. 

On  the  first  of  every  month,  Raf  aela  always 
wrote  a  four-page  letter  to  Zureda,  containing 
all  the  petty  details  of  her  quiet,  humdrum  life. 
It  was  by  means  of  these  letters,  written  on 
commercial  cap,  that  the  prisoner  learned  the 
rapid  physical  growth  of  little  Manolq.  By 


60  THEIE  SON 


the  time  the  boy  had  reached  twelve  years  he 
had  become  rebellious,  quarrelsome  and  idle. 
He  was  still  in  the  pot-hook  class,  at  school. 
Stone-throwing  was  one  of  his  favorite  habits. 
One  day  he  injured  another  boy  of  his  age  so 
severely  that  the  constable  gathered  him  in, 
and  nothing  but  the  fatherly  intervention  of 
the  priest  saved  him  from  a  night  in  the 
lock-up. 

Rafaela  always  ended  up  the  paragraphs 
thus,  in  which  she  described  the  fierce  wildness 
of  the  boy: 

"I  tell  you  plainly,  I  can't  manage  him." 

This  seemed  a  confession  of  weariness,  that 
outlined  both  a  threat  and  a  prophecy. 

The  prisoner  wrote  her,  in  one  of  his  letters : 

"The  last  jail  pardon,  that  you  may  have 
read  about  in  the  papers,  let  out  many  of  my 
companions.  I  had  no  such  luck.  But,  any- 
how, they  cut  five  years  off  my  time.  So  there 
are  only  six  years  more  between  us." 

Regularly  the  letters  came  and  went  be- 
tween Rafaela  and  the  prisoner  at  Ceuta.  Two 
years  more  drew  to  their  close. 

But  evil  fortune  had  not  yet  grown  weary 
of  stamping  its  heel  on  Amadeo  Zureda's 
honest  shoulders, 


THEIR   SON  61 


"Please  forgive  me,  dear  Rafaela,"  the 
prisoner  wrote  again,  after  a  while,  "the  new 
sorrow  I  must  cause  you.  But  by  the  life  of 
our  son  I  swear  I  could  not  avoid  the  mis- 
fortune which  most  expectedly  is  going  to  pro- 
long our  separation,  for  I  don't  know  how 
long. 

"As  you  may  guess,  there  are  few  saints 
among  the  rough  crowd  here,  that  are  scraped 
up  from  all  the  prisons  in  Spain.  Though  I 
have  to  live  among  them,  I  don't  consider  them 
my  equals.  For  that  reason  I  try  to  keep  away 
from  them,  and  have  nothing  to  do  with  their 
rough  mirth  or  noisy  quarrels.  Well,  it  hap- 
pened that  the  end  of  last  week  a  smart- Aleck 
of  a  fellow  came  in,  an  Andalusian.  He  had 
been  given  twelve  years  for  killing  one  man 
and  badly  injuring  another.  As  soon  as  this 
fellow  saw  me,  he  took  me  for  a  boob  he  could 
make  sport  of,  and  lost  no  chance  of  poking 
fun  at  me.  I  kept  quiet,  and — so  as  not  to  get 
into  any  mix-up  with  him — turned  my  back 
on  him. 

"Yesterday,  at  dinner,  he  tried  to  pick  a 
quarrel.  Some  of  the  other  prisoners  laughed 
and  set  him  on  to  me. 


62  THEIR  SON 


"  'Look  here,  Amadeo,'  said  he.  'What  are 
you  in  for?' 

"I  answered,  looking  him  square  in  the 
eyes: 

"  'For  having  killed  a  man.' 

"'And  what  did  you  kill  him  for?'  he  in- 
sisted. 

"I  said  nothing,  and  then  he  added  some- 
thing very  coarse  and  ugly  that  I  won't  repeat. 
It's  enough  for  you  to  know  your  name  was 
mixed  up  in  it.  That's  why  your  name  was 
the  last  word  his  mouth  ever  uttered.  I  drew 
my  knife — you  know  that  in  spite  of  all  the 
care  they  take,  and  all  their  searches,  we  all 
go  armed — and  cried: 

'  'Look  out  for  yourself,  now,  because  I'm 
going  to  kill  you!' 

"Then  we  fought,  and  it  was  a  good  fight, 
too,  because  he  was  a  brave  man.  But  his 
courage  was  of  no  use  to  him.  He  died  on  the 
spot. 

"Forgive  me,  dearest  Rafaela  of  my  soul, 
and  make  our  boy  forgive  me,  too.  This 
makes  my  situation  much  worse,  because  now 
I  shall  have  another  trial  and  I  don't  know 
what  sentence  I'll  get.  I  realize  it  was  very 
bad  of  me  to  kill  this  man,  but  if  I  hadn't 


THEIR  SON  63 


done  it  he  would  have  killed  me,  which  would 
have  been  much  worse  for  all  of  us." 

Several  months  after,  Zureda  wrote  again: 
"I  have  been  having  niy  trial.  Luckily  all 
the  witnesses  testified  in  my  behalf,  and  this, 
added  to  the  good  opinion  the  prison  authori- 
ties have  of  me,  has  greatly  improved  my  po- 
sition. The  indictment  was  terrible,  but  I'm 
not  worrying  much  about  that.  To-morrow  I 
shall  know  my  sentence." 

All  the  letters  of  Amadeo  Zureda  were  like 
this,  peaceful  and  noble,  seemingly  dictated 
by  the  most  resigned  stoicism.  He  never  let 
anything  find  its  way  into  them  which  might 
remind  Rafaela  of  her  fault.  In  these  pages, 
filled  with  a  strong,  even  writing,  there  was 
neither  reproach,  dejection,  nor  despairing  im- 
patience. They  seemed  to  be  the  admirable 
reflection  of  an  iron  will  which  had  been  taught 
by  misfortune — the  most  excellent  mother  of 
all  knowledge — to  understand  the  dour  secret 
of  hoping  and  of  waiting. 


VI 


THE  very  same  day  when  Amadeo 
Zureda  got  out  of  jail,  he  received 
from  Rafaela  a  letter  which  began 
thus: 

"Little  Manolo  was  twenty  years  old,  yes- 
terday." 

The  one-time  engineer  left  the  boat  from 
Africa  at  Valencia,  passed  the  night  at  an  inn 
not  far  from  the  railroad  station,  and  early 
next  morning  took  the  train  which  was  to 
carry  him  to  Ecks.  After  so  many  years  of 
imprisonment,  the  old  convict  felt  that  nerv- 
ous restlessness,  that  lack  of  self-confidence, 
that  cruel  fear  of  destiny  which  men  ill-adapt- 
ed to  their  environment  are  accustomed  to  feel 
every  time  life  presents  itself  to  them  under  a 
new  aspect.  Defeat  at  last  makes  men  cow- 
ardly and  pessimistic.  They  recall  everything 
they  have  suffered  and  the  uselessness  of  all 
their  struggles,  and  they  think:  "This,  that 
I  am  now  beginning,  will  turn  out  badly  for 
me  too,  like  all  the  rest." 

64 


THEIR   SON  65 


Amadeo  Zureda  had  altered  greatly.  His 
white  mustache  formed  a  sad  contrast  with  his 
wrinkled  face,  tanned  by  the  African  sun.  The 
expression  of  an  infinite  pain  seemed  to  deep- 
en the  peaceful  gaze  of  his  black  eyes.  The 
vertical  wrinkle  in  his  brow  had  deepened  un- 
til it  seemed  a  scar.  His  body,  once  strong 
and  erect,  had  grown  thin;  and  as  he  walked 
he  bent  somewhat  forward. 

The  rattling  uproar  of  the  train  and  the 
swift  succession  of  panoramas  now  unrolling 
before  his  eyes  recalled  to  the  memory  of  Zu- 
reda the  joys  of  those  other  and  better  times 
when  he  had  been  an  engineer — joys  now 
largely  blotted  out  by  the  distance  of  long- 
gone  years.  He  remembered  Pedro,  the  An- 
dalusian  fireman,  and  those  two  engines, 
"Sweetie"  and  "Nigger,"  on  which  he  had 
worked  so  long.  An  inner  voice  seemed  ask- 
ing him :  "What  can  have  become  of  all  this?" 

He  also  thought  about  his  house.  He  men- 
tally built  up  again  its  facade,  beheld  its  bal- 
conies and  evoked  the  appearance  of  each 
room.  His  memory,  clouded  by  the  grim  and 
brutalizing  life  of  the  prison,  had  never  dipped 
so  profoundly  into  the  past,  nor  had  it  ever 
brushed  away  the  dust  from  his  old  memories 


66  THEIE  SON 


and  so  clearly  reconstructed  them.  He  thought 
about  his  son,  about  Rafaela  and  Manolo  Ber- 
langa,  seeming  to  behold  their  faces  and  even 
their  clothing  just  as  they  had  been  long  ago; 
and  he  felt  surprised  that  revocation  of  the 
silversmith's  face  should  produce  no  pain  in 
him.  At  that  moment  and  in  spite  of  the  ir- 
reparable injury  which  had  been  done  him,  he 
felt  no  hatred  of  Berlanga.  All  the  rancor 
which  until  then  had  possessed  him  seemed  to 
sink  down  peacefully  into  an  unknown  and  in- 
effable emotion  of  pity  and  forgetfulness.  The 
poor  convict  once  more  examined  his  con- 
science, and  felt  astonished  that  he  could  no 
longer  find  any  poison  there.  May  it  not  be, 
after  all,  that  liberty  reforms  a  man? 

At  Jativa  a  man  got  into  the  car,  a  man  al- 
ready old,  whose  face  seemed  to  the  former  en- 
gineer to  bear  some  traces  of  a  friendly  ap- 
pearance. The  new-comer  also,  on  his  side, 
looked  at  Zureda  as  if  he  remembered  him. 
Thus  both  of  them  little  by  little  silently  drew 
together.  In  the  end  they  studied  each  other 
with  warm  interest,  as  if  sure  of  having  some- 
time known  each  other  before.  Amadeo  was 
the  first  to  speak. 

"It  seems  to  me,"  said  he,  "that  we  have  al- 


THEIR  SON  67 


ready  seen  each  other  somewhere,  years  ago." 

"That  was  just  what  I  was  thinking,  my- 
self," answered  the  other. 

"The  fact  is,"  went  on  the  engineer,  "I'm 
sure  we  must  have  talked  to  each  other,  many 
times." 

"Yes,  yes!" 

"We  must  have  been  friends,  sometime." 

"Probably." 

And  they  continued  looking  at  each  other, 
enwrapped  by  the  same  thought.  Zureda  asked : 

"Have  you  ever  lived  in  Madrid?" 

"Yes,  ten  or  twelve  years." 

"Where?" 

"Near  the  Estacion  del  Norte,  where  I  was 
an  employee." 

"Say  no  more!"  exclaimed  Zureda.  "I 
worked  for  the  same  company,  myself.  I  was 
an  engineer." 

"On  what  line?" 

"Madrid  to  Bilbao." 

Slowly  and  silently  memories  began  to  rise 
and  group  themselves  together  in  the  enor- 
mous, black  forgetfulness  of  those  twenty 
years.  Amadeo  Zureda  took  out  his  tobacco- 
box  and  offered  tobacco  to  his  companion. 
Whatever  seemed  to  have  been  lacking  to 


68  THEIR   SON 


awaken  memory,  in  the  other's  appearance  or 
in  his  voice,  was  now  instantly  supplied  as  the 
engineer  saw  him  take  the  fine-cut,  roll  a  cig- 
arette, light  it  and  afterward  thrust  it  into  the 
left  corner  of  his  mouth.  The  memories  of 
the  old  convict  were  flooded  with  light. 

"Enough  of  this!"  cried  he.  "You  are  Don 
Adolf o  Moreno!" 

"That's  right,  I'm  the  man!" 

"You  were  a  conductor  on  the  Asturias  line 
when  I  worked  on  the  one  running  to  Bilbao. 
Don't  you  remember  me?  Amadeo  Zureda?" 

"Yes,  indeed!" 

The  two  men  embraced  each  other. 

"Why,  I  used  to  say  'thee'  and  'thou'  to 
you!"  cried  Don  Adolf  o. 

"Yes,  yes,  I  remember  that,  too.  I  remem- 
ber everything,  now.  We  were  good  friends 
once,  eh?  Well,  time  seems  to  have  made  some 
pretty  big  changes  in  both  of  us." 

When  the  joy  of  the  first  moments  of  meet- 
ing had  been  somewhat  allayed,  the  former 
conductor  and  the  old  engineer  grew  sad  as 
they  recalled  the  many  bitter  experiences  life 
had  dealt  them. 

"I've  already  heard  of  your  misfortune," 
said  Don  Adolfo,  "and  I  was  mighty  sorry  to 


THEIR   SON  69 


hear  about  it.    Sometimes  a  youthful  moment 
of  madness,  that  lasts  only  a  minute,  will  cost 
a  man  his  whole  future.    Why  did  you  do  it?" 
Stolidly  Zuredo  answered: 
"Oh,  it  was  a  quarrel  over  cards." 
"Yes,  that's  so;  they  told  me  about  it." 
Amadeo  breathed  easy.  The  conductor  knew 
nothing;  and  it  seemed  probable  that  many 
others  should  be  as  ignorant  as  he  about  what 
had  driven  him  to  kill  Manolo.    Don  Adolfo 
asked : 

"Where  have  you  been?" 
"At  Ceuta." 
"A  long  time?" 

"Twenty  years  and  some  months." 
"The  deuce!    You've  just  come  from  down 
there?" 
"Yes,  sir." 

"It's  evident  to  me,"  continued  Don  Adolfo, 
"you've  suffered  a  great  deal  more  than  I 
have ;  but  you  mustn't  think  I  have  been  lucky, 
either.  Life  is  a  wild  animal  that  drags  down 
every  one  who  tries  to  grapple  with  it,  and 
yet  people  keep  right  on  struggling.  I'm  a 
widower.  My  poor  wife  has  been  dust  for 
nearly  fifteen  years.  The  eldest  of  my  three 
daughters  got  married,  and  both  the  others 


70  THEIR   SON 


died.  Now  I'm  on  a  pension  and  live  at  Ecks 
with  a  sister-in-law,  the  widow  of  my  brother 
Juan.  I  don't  think  you  remember  him." 

Little  by  little,  and  with  many  beatings 
about  the  bush,  because  confidence  is  a  timid 
quality  which  soon  takes  flight  from  those 
scourged  by  misfortune,  the  ex-convict  told 
his  plans.  He  hoped  to  establish  himself  at 
Ecks,  with  his  wife.  He  had  brought  about 
two  thousand  pesetas  from  prison,  with  which 
he  hoped  to  buy  a  little  house  and  a  bit  of  good 
land. 

"I  don't  know  beans  about  farming,1*  he 
added,  "but  that's  like  everything  else.  You 
learn  by  doing.  Moreover,  my  son,  who  has 
grown  up  in  the  town,  will  help  me  a  great 
deal." 

Don  Adolfo  wrinkled  his  brow  with  a  grave 
and  reflective  expression,  like  a  man  who  is 
remembering  something. 

"From  what  you  say,"  He  exclaimed,  "I 
think  I  know  who  your  wife  is." 

The  old  engineer  felt  shame.  The  bleeding 
image  of  his  misfortune  was  hard  to  wipe  from 
his  memory.  The  mention  of  his  wife  had 
freshened  it.  He  answered; 


THEIR   SON  71 


"You  probably  do  know  her.  The  village 
must  be  very  small." 

"Very  small,  indeed.  What's  your  wife's 
name?" 

"Rafaela." 

"Yes,  yes,"  answered  Don  Adolfo.  "Ra- 
faela's  the  woman.  I  know  her  well.  As  for 
Manolo,  your  son,  I  know  him  too." 

Amadeo  Zureda  trembled.  He  felt  afraid, 
and  cold.  For  a  few  moments  he  remained 
silent,  without  knowing  what  to  say.  Don 
Adolfo  continued  with  rough  frankness: 

"Your  Manolo  is  a  pretty  tough  nut,  and  he 
gives  his  poor  mother  a  mighty  hard  time. 
She's  a  saint,  that  woman.  I  think  he  even 
beats  her.  Well,  I  won't  tell  you  any  more." 

Pale  and  trembling,  putting  down  a  great 
desire  to  weep  which  had  just  come  orer  him, 
Amadeo  asked: 

"Is  it  possible?    Can  he  be  as  bad  as  that?" 

"I  tell  you  he's  a  dandy!"  repeated  Don 
Adolfo.  "If  he  died,  the  devil  would  think  a 
good  while  before  taking  him.  He's  a  drunk- 
ard and  a  gambler,  always  chasing  women  and 
fighting.  He's  the  limit!"  After  a  moment 
he  added:  "Really,  he  don't  seem  like  a  son 
of  yours,  at  all." 


72  THEIR   SON 


Amadeo  Zureda  made  no  answer.  Looking 
out  of  the  car  window,  he  tried  to  distract  him- 
self with  the  landscape.  The  old  conductor's 
words  had  crushed  him.  He  had  been  igno- 
rant of  all  this,  for  Rafaela  in  her  letters  had 
said  nothing  about  it.  He  was  astonished  at 
realizing  how  evil  destiny  was  attacking  him, 
denying  him  that  rest  which  every  hard-work- 
ing man,  no  matter  how  poor,  is  at  last  entitled 
to. 

Retracing  the  hateful  pathway  of  his  mem- 
ories, he  reached  the  source  of  all  his  misfor- 
tunes. Twenty  years  before,  when  Senor 
Tomas  had  told  him  of  the  relations  between 
Rafaela  and  Manolo,  he  too  had  declared: 
"They  say  he  beats  her." 

What  connection  might  there  be  between 
these  statements,  which  seemed  to  weave  a 
nexus  of  hate  between  the  son  and  the  dead 
lover?  Once  more  the  words  of  the  old  con- 
ductor sounded  in  his  ears,  and  prophetically 
took  hold  upon  his  soul: 

"Manolo  does  not  appear  to  be  your  son." 

Without  having  read  Darwin,  Amadeo  Zu- 
reda instinctively  sought  explanation  and  con- 
solation in  the  laws  of  heredity,  for  the  pain 
now  consuming  him.  Never  had  he,  even  when 


THEIR   SON  73 


a  young  fellow,  been  given  to  drink  or  cards. 
He  had  not  been  fond  of  the  women,  nor  had 
he  been  a  meddler  and  bully.  And  how  had 
such  degradations  been  able  to  engraft  them- 
selves into  the  blood  of  his  son? 

Don  Adolfo  and  Zureda  got  out  at  the  sta- 
tion of  Ecks.  Afternoon  was  drawing  to  its 
close.  On  the  platform  there  were  only  six  or 
seven  persons.  The  former  conductor  waved 
his  hand  to  a  woman  and  to  a  young  man, 
drawing  near.  He  cried: 

"There  are  your  folks!" 

This  time  seeing  Rafaela,  Amadeo  did  not 
hesitate.  It  was  she  indeed,  despite  her  pro- 
tuberant abdomen,  her  sad  fat  face,  and  her 
white  hair.  It  was  she! 

"Rafaela!"  cried  he.  He  would  have  known 
her  among  a  thousand  other  women.  They  fell 
into  each  other's  arms,  weeping  with  that  enor- 
mous joy  and  pain  felt  by  all  who  part  in 
youth  and  meet  again  in  old  age,  with  the 
whole  of  life  behind  them.  After  the  greeting 
with  his  wife  was  at  an  end,  the  engineer  em- 
braced Manolo. 

"What  a  fine  fellow  you  are!"  he  stam- 
mered, when  the  beating  of  his  heart,  growing 
a  little  more  calm,  let  him  speak. 


74  THEIR   SON 


Don  Adolf o  said  good-by. 

"I'm  in  a  hurry.  We'll  see  each  other  to- 
morrow 1"  He  saluted,  and  walked  away. 

Amadeo  Zureda,  with  Rafaela  at  his  right 
and  Manolo  at  his  left,  quitted  the  station. 

"Is  the  town  very  far  away?"  asked  he. 

"Hardly  two  kilometers,"  she  answered. 

"All  right  then,  let's  walk." 

Slowly  they  made  their  way  down  the  road 
that  stretched,  winding,  between  two  vast 
reaches  of  brown,  plowed  land.  Far  in  the 
distance,  lighted  by  the  dying  sun,  the  little 
hamlet  was  visible ;  that  miserable  collection  of 
huts  about  which  Zureda  had  thought  so  many 
times,  dreaming  that  there  he  should  find  the 
sweet  refuge  of  peaceful  forgetfulness  and  of 
redemption. 


jse* 


VII 

AFTER  Amadeo  came  to  Ecks,  Ra- 
faela  went  no  longer  to  the  river. 
The  former  engineer  was  unwilling 
that  his  wife  should  toil.  They  had 
enough  for  all  to  live  on  for  a  while,  with  what 
he  had  made  in  prison.  They  spoke  not  of 
the  past.  You  might  almost  have  thought  they 
had  forgotten  it.  Why  remember?  Zureda 
had  forgiven  everything.  Rafaela,  moreover, 
was  no  longer  the  same.  The  gay  happiness 
of  her  eyes  had  gone  dead;  the  waving  black- 
ness of  her  hair  and  the  girlish  quickness  of 
her  body  had  vanished.  There  was  a  melan- 
choly abandonment,  heavy  with  remorse,  in 
her  sad  and  flabby  face,  in  the  humility  of  her 
look,  in  the  slow,  round  fatness  of  her  whole 
body. 

The  ex-convict  followed  the  advice  of  Don 
Adolfo  and  gave  up  all  idea  of  devoting  him- 
self to  farming.  In  the  best  street  of  the  vil- 
lage, near  the  church,  he  set  up  a  general  re- 
pair-shop where  he  took  in  both  wood  and  iron 

75 


76  THEIR   SON 


work.  There  he  shod  a  mule,  mended  a  cart  or 
put  a  new  coulter  to  a  plow,  with  equal  facility. 

He  had  not  been  established  long  when  his 
modest  little  business  began  to  pick  up  and 
be  a  real  money-maker.  Very  soon  his  cus- 
tomers increased.  The  disquieting  story  of 
his  imprisonment  seemed  forgotten.  Every- 
body liked  him,  for  he  was  good,  affable  and 
pleasant,  in  a  melancholy  way.  He  paid  his 
little  debts  promptly,  and  worked  hard. 

Zureda  felt  life  once  more  grow  calm.  Slow- 
ly his  future,  which  till  then  had  looked 
stormy,  commenced  to  appear  a  land  of  hos- 
pitality, comfortable  and  good.  The  threat 
of  to-morrow,  which  makes  so  many  men  un- 
easy, had  ceased  to  be  a  problem  for  him.  His 
future  was  already  founded,  laid  out,  fore- 
seen. The  fifteen  or  twenty  years  that  still 
might  remain  to  him,  he  hoped  to  pass  in  the 
loving  accumulation  of  a  little  fortune  to  leave 
his  Rafaela. 

He  got  up  with  the  sun  and  worked  indus- 
triously all  day,  driven  by  this  ambition.  In 
the  evening  he  took  a  dog  that  Don  Adolfo 
had  given  him,  and  went  wandering  in  the  out- 
skirts of  the  village.  One  of  his  favorite  walks 
was  out  to  the  cemetery,  He  often  pushed 


THEIR   SON  77 


open  the  old  gate,  which  never  was  quite 
closed,  and  in  the  burial-ground  sat  himself 
down  upon  a  broken  mill-stone  which  hap- 
pened to  be  there.  Seated  thus,  he  liked  to 
smoke  a  cigarette. 

Many  crosses  were  blackening  with  age,  in 
the  tall  grass  that  covered  the  earth.  The  old 
man  often  called  up  memories  of  the  time  when 
he  had  been  an  engineer.  He  remembered 
the  prison,  too,  and  his  tired  will  seemed  to 
tremble.  Peacefully  he  looked  about  him. 
Here,  sometime,  would  be  his  bed.  What 
rest,  what  silence !  And  he  breathed  deep,  en- 
thralled by  the  rare  and  calming  joy  of  will- 
ingness to  die.  Here  inside  the  old  wall  of 
mud  bricks,  reddened  by  the  setting  sun — 
here  in  this  garden  of  forgetfulness — how  well 
one  ought  to  sleep! 

Only  one  trouble  disturbed  and  embittered 
the  peaceful  decline  of  Amadeo  Zureda.  This 
trouble  was  his  son,  Manolo.  Through  an  ex- 
cess of  fatherly  love,  doubtless  mistaken,  he 
had  the  year  before  got  Manolo  exempted 
from  military  service.  The  boy's  wild,  vicious 
character  was  fanatically  rebellious  against  all 
discipline.  In  vain  Zureda  sought  to  teach 
him  a  trade.  Threats  and  entreaties,  as  well 


78  THEIR   SON 


as  all  kinds  of  wise  advice,  were  shattered 
against  the  invincibly  gypsy-like  will  of  the 
young  fellow. 

"If  you  don't  want  to  support  me,"  Man- 
olo  often  used  to  say,  "let  me  go.  Kick  me 
out.  I'll  get  by,  on  my  own  hook." 

Often  and  often  Manolo  vanished  from  the 
little  town.  He  stayed  away  for  days  at  a 
time,  engaged  in  mysterious  adventures.  Peo- 
ple coming  in  from  neighboring  villages  re- 
ported him  as  given  over  to  gaming.  One 
night  he  showed  up  with  a  serious  wound  in 
the  groin,  a  deep  knife-stab. 

"Who  did  that  to  you?"  demanded  Zureda. 

The  youth  answered: 

"Nobody's  business.  /  know  who  it  is. 
Sometime  or  other  he'll  get  his,  all  right!" 

To  save  himself  from  police  investigation, 
Zureda  said  nothing  about  it.  For  some  weeks, 
Manolo  kept  quiet.  But  early  one  morning  a 
couple  of  rural  guards  found  the  body  of  a 
man  on  the  river-bank.  His  body  was  cov- 
ered with  stabs.  All  investigations  to  find  the 
murderer  were  fruitless.  The  crime  remained 
unavenged.  Only  Amadeo — who  just  a  bit 
after  the  discovery  of  the  body  had  discovered 
Manolo  washing  a  blood-stained  handkerchief 


THEIE   SON  79 


in  a  water- jar — was  certain  that  his  son  had 
done  this  murder. 

Once  more  the  sinister  words  of  Don 
Adolfo  recurred  to  his  mind,  bruising  him, 
maddening  him,  seeming  to  bore  into  his  very 
brain: 

"He  does  not  seem  to  be  your  son,  at  all!" 

Amadeo  pondered  this,  and  decided  it  was 
true.  The  boy  did  not  seem  his.  Manolo's 
outlaw  way  of  living  did  not  stop  here.  Tak- 
ing advantage  of  his  mother's  love  and  of  the 
quiet  disposition  of  Amadeo,  almost  every  day 
he  showed  the  very  greatest  need  of  money. 

"I've  got  to  have  a  hundred  pesetas,"  he 
would  say.  "I've  just  got  to  have  them!  If 
you  people  don't  come  across,  well,  all  right! 
I'll  get  them,  some  way.  But  perhaps  you'll 
be  sorry  then,  you  didn't  give  them  to  me!" 

He  was  mad  for  enjoyment.     When  his 
mother  tried  to  warn  and  advise  him,  saying: 
"Why  don't  you  work,  you  young  wretch? 
Don't  you  see  how  your  father  does?" — he, 
would  retort : 

"I  don't  call  that  living,  to  work!  I'd  rath- 
er go  hang  myself,  than  live  the  way  the  old 
man  lives !" 

You  would  have  thought  Rafaela  was  his 


80  THEIR   SON 


slave,  by  the  lack  of  decency  and  respect  he 
showed  her.  When  he  called  her,  he  would 
hardly  condescend  to  look  at  her  at  all.  He 
spoke  little  to  his  father,  and  what  he  said  was 
rough  and  harsh.  The  worst  boy  in  the  world 
could  not  have  acted  with  more  insolence.  His 
wild  spirit,  lusting  pleasure,  seemed  to  burn 
with  an  instinctive  flame  of  hate. 

One  night  when  Amadeo  came  home  from 
the  Casino  where  he  and  Don  Adolf  o,  with  the 
druggist  and  a  few  other  such-like  worthies, 
were  wont  to  meet  every  Saturday,  he  found 
the  door  of  his  shop  ajar.  This  astonished 
him.  He  raised  his  voice  and  began  to  call: 

"Manolo!    You,  Manolo!" 

Raf  aela  answered  him,  from  the  back  room 
of  the  house: 

"He's  not  here." 

"Do  you  know  whether  he's  going  to  come 
back  soon?  I  want  to  know,  before  locking 
up." 

A  short  silence  followed.  After  a  bit,  Ra- 
faela  answered: 

"You'd  better  lock  up,  anyhow." 

There  seemed  to  be  something  like  a  sob  of 
grief  in  the  voice  of  the  poor  woman.  The  old 
engineer,  alarmed  by  a  presentiment  of  some- 


THEIR   SON  81 


thing  terrible,  strode  through  the  shop  and 
went  on  into  the  house.  Rafaela  was  sitting 
in  front  of  the  stove,  in  the  kitchen,  her  hands 
humbly  crossed  on  her  lap,  her  eyes  full  of 
tears,  her  white  hair  rumpled  up,  as  if  some 
parricide  hand  had  furiously  seized  her  head. 
Zureda  took  hold  of  his  wife  by  the  shoulders 
and  forced  her  to  get  up. 

"What — what's  happened?"  he  stammered. 

Rafaela's  nose  was  all  bloody,  her  forehead 
was  bruised  and  her  hands  bore  lacerations. 

"What's  the  matter  with  you?"  repeated  the 
engineer. 

Old  and  dull  as  were  his  eyes,  now  they 
blazed  up  again  with  that  red  lightning  of 
death  which,  twenty  years  before,  had  sent 
him  to  prison.  Rafaela  was  terrified,  and  tried 
to  lie  out  of  it. 

"It's  nothing,  Amadeo,"  she  stammered. 
"Nothing,  I  tell  you.  Let  me  tell  you!  I — 
I  fell— that's  the  living  truth!" 

But  Zureda  shook  the  truth  out  of  her  with 
threats,  almost  with  violence. 

"Manolo's  been  beating  you,  eh?  He  has, 
hasn't  he?" 

She  began  to  sob,  still  trying  to  deny  it,  not 
wanting  to  accuse  her  heart's  darling.  The 


82  THEIR  SON 


old  engineer  repeated,  trembling  with  rage: 

"He  beat  you,  eh?    What?" 

Rafaela  took  a  long  time  to  answer.  She 
was  afraid  to  speak,  but  finally  she  confessed 
everything. 

"Yes,  yes,  he  did.    Oh— it's  terrible  I" 

"What  did  he  beat  you  for?" 

"Because  he  wanted  money." 

"God!    The  swine!" 

The  rage  and  pain  of  the  old  convict  burst 
out  in  a  leonine  roar,  that  filled  the  kitchen. 

"He  told  you  that?"  demanded  Amadeo. 
"Said  he  wanted  money?" 

"Yes." 

"How  much?" 

"Twenty-five  pesetas.  I  refused  as  long  as 
I  could.  But  what  could  I  do?  Oh,  if  you'd 
seen  him  then,  you  wouldn't  have  known  him. 
I  was  awfully  scared — thought  he  was  going 
to  kiU  me- 

As  she  said  this,  she  covered  her  eyes  with 
her  hands.  She  seemed  to  be  shutting  out  from 
them,  together  with  the  ugly  vision  of  what  had 
just  happened,  some  other  sight — the  sight  of 
something  horrible,  something  long-past, 
something  quite  the  same. 

Zureda,  afraid  of  showing  the  tumultuous 


THEIR   SON  83 


rage  in  his  heart,  said  nothing  more.  The  most 
ominous  memories  crowded  his  mind.  A  long, 
long  time  ago,  before  he  had  gone  to  jail, 
Don  Tomas  in  the  course  of  an  unforgettable 
conversation  had  told  him  that  Manolo 
Berlanga  maltreated  Rafaela.  And  all  these 
years  afterward,  when  he  was  once  more  a  free 
man,  Don  Adolfo  had  said  the  same  thing 
about  young  Manolo.  Remembering  this 
strange  agreement  of  opinions,  Amadeo  Zu- 
reda  felt  a  bitter  and  inextinguishable  hate 
against  the  whole  race  of  the  silversmith — a 
race  accursed,  it  seemed,  which  had  come  into 
the  world  only  to  hurt  and  wound  him  in  his 
dearest  affections. 

Next  morning  the  old  man,  who  had  hardly 
slept  more  than  an  hour  or  two,  woke  early. 

"What  time  is  it?"  asked  he. 

Rafaela  had  already  risen.    She  answered: 

"Almost  six." 

"Has  Manolo  come  back?" 

"Not  yet." 

The  old  engineer  got  out  of  bed,  dressed  as 
usual  and  went  down  to  his  shop.  Rafaela 
kept  watch  on  him.  The  apparent  calm  of  the 
old  man  looked  suspicious.  Noon  came,  and 
Manolo  did  not  return  for  dinner.  Night 


84  THEIR  SON 


drew  on,  nor  did  he  come  back  to  sleep.  Zu- 
reda  and  his  wife  went  to  bed  early.  A  few 
days  drifted  along. 

Sunday  morning,  Zureda  was  sitting  at  the 
door  of  his  shop.  It  was  just  eleven.  Women, 
some  with  mantillas,  others  with  but  a  simple 
kerchief  knotted  about  their  heads,  were  go- 
ing to  mass.  High  up  in  the  Gothic  steeple, 
the  bells  were  swinging,  gay  and  clangorous. 
A  neighbor,  passing,  said  to  the  old  engineer: 

"Well,  Manolo's  showed  up." 

"When?"  asked  Zureda,  phlegmatically. 

"Last  night." 

"Where  did  you  see  him?" 

"At  Honorio's  inn." 

"A  great  one,  that  boy  is!  He's  certainly 
some  fine  lad!  Never  came  near  me!" 

The  day  drew  on,  without  anything  happen- 
ing. Cautiously  the  engineer  guarded  against 
telling  Rafaela  that  their  son  had  returned. 
A  little  while  before  supper,  giving  her  the  ex- 
cuse that  Don  Adolfo  was  waiting  for  him  at 
the  Casino,  Zureda  left  the  house  and  made 
his  way  to  the  inn  where  Manolo  was  wont  to 
meet  his  rough  friends.  There  he  found  him, 
indeed,  gaming  with  cards. 

"I've  got  something  to  say  to  you,"  said  he. 


THEIR   SON  85 


The  young  man  threw  his  cards  on  the  table 
and  got  up.  He  was  tall,  slim  and  good-look- 
ing; and  in  the  thin  line  of  his  lips  and  the  pen- 
etrant  gaze  of  his  greenish  eyes  lay  something 
bold,  defiant. 

The  two  men  went  out  into  the  street,  and, 
saying  no  word,  walked  to  the  outskirts  of  the 
town.  When  Amadeo  thought  they  had  come 
to  a  good  place,  he  stopped  and  looked  his  son 
fair  in  the  face. 

"I've  brought  you  out  here,"  said  he,  "to 
tell  you  you're  never  coming  back  to  my  house. 
Understand  me?" 

Manolo  nodded  "Yes." 

"I'm  throwing  you  out,"  continued  the  old 
man.  "Get  that,  too!  I'm  throwing  you  out. 
because  I  won't  deal  with  a  dog  like  you.  I 
won't  have  one  anywhere  around!  I  tell  you 
this  not  as  father  to  son,  but  as  one  man  to  an- 
other, so  you  can  come  back  at  me  if  you  want 
to.  Understand?  I'm  ready  for  you!  That's 
why  I've  brought  you  'way  out  here." 

As  he  spoke,  slowly,  his  stern  spirit  caught 
fire.  His  cheeks  grew  pale,  and  in  his  jacket 
pockets  his  fists  knotted.  Manolo's  savage 
blood  began  to  boil,  as  well, 


86  THEIE   SON 


"Don't  make  me  say  anything,  you!"  he 
flung  at  his  father. 

He  turned  as  if  to  walk  away.  His  voice, 
his  gesture,  the  scornful  shrug  of  his  shoulders, 
with  which  he  seemed  to  underscore  his  words, 
all  were  those  of  a  ruffian  and  a  bully.  Any- 
body would  have  said  that  the  tough,  swagger- 
ing silversmith  lived  again,  in  him.  Zureda 
controlled  his  anger,  and  began  once  more: 

"If  you  want  to  fight,  you'll  be  a  fool  to 
wait  till  to-morrow.  I'm  ready  for  it,  now." 

"Crazy,  you?"  demanded  the  youth. 

"No!" 

"Well,  you  act  it!" 

"You're  wrong.  I  know  all  about  you — I 
know  you've  been  beating  your  mother.  And 
you  can't  pay  for  a  thing  like  that  even  with 
every  drop  of  your  blood.  No,  sir !  Not  even 
the  last  drop  of  pig's  blood  you've  got  in  your 
body  would  pay  for  that!" 

Amadeo  Zureda  was  afraid  of  himself.  He 
had  begun  to  shiver.  All  the  hate  that,  long 
ago,  had  flung  him  upon  Berlanga,  now  had 
burst  forth  again  in  a  fresh,  strong,  over- 
whelming torrent. 

Suddenly  Manolo  stepped  up  to  his  father 
and  seized  him  by  the  lapel. 


THEIR   SON  87 


"You  going  to  shut  up?"  he  snarled,  in  rage. 
"Or  are  you  bound  to  drive  me  to  it?" 

Zureda's  answer  was  a  smash  in  the  face. 
Then  the  two  men  fell  upon  each  other,  first 
with  their  fists,  presently  with  knives.  At  that 
moment  the  old  man  saw  in  the  face  of  the  man 
he  had  believed  his  son,  the  same  expression 
of  hate  that  twenty  years  ago  had  distorted 
the  features  of  Manolo  Berlanga.  Those 
eyes,  that  mouth  all  twisted  into  a  grimace  of 
ferocity,  that  slim  and  feline  body  now  trem- 
bling with  rage,  all  were  like  the  silversmith's. 
The  look  of  the  father  came  back  again  in  that 
of  the  son,  as  exactly  as  if  both  faces  had  been 
poured  in  the  same  mold. 

And  for  the  first  time,  after  so  long  a  time, 
the  old  engineer  clearly  understood  every- 
thing. 

Annihilated  by  the  realization  of  this  new 
disaster,  no  longer  having  any  heart  to  defend 
himself,  the  wretched  man  let  his  arms  fall. 
And  just  at  this  moment  Manolo,  beside  him- 
self with  rage,  plunged  the  fatal  blade  into 
his  breast. 

Now  with  his  vengeance  complete,  the  par- 
ricide took  to  flight. 

Zureda,  dying,  was  carried  to  the 


88  THEIR   SON 


hospital.  There,  that  same  night,  Don  Adolfo 
came  to  see  him.  The  good  neighbor's  grief 
was  terrible,  even  to  the  point  of  the  grotesque. 

"Is  it  true,  what  people  are  saying?"  he 
asked,  weeping.  "Is  it  true?" 

The  wounded  man  had  hardly  strength 
enough  to  press  his  hand  a  very  little. 

"Good-by,  Adolfo,"  he  stammered.  "Now 
I  know  what  I — had  to  know.  You  told  me, 
but  I — couldn't  believe  it.  But  now  I  know 
you — were  right.  Manolo  was  not — my 


son " 


THE  NECKLACE 


THE  NECKLACE 

THE  first  act  was  finished.     Enrique 
Darles  went  down  to  the  foyer.  His 
provincial  curiosity  drew  him  thith- 
er.   He  felt  an  eagerness  to  absorb 
the  vast,  motley  spirit  of  the  city.    He  wanted 
to   behold   many  things,   to   school   himself, 
strengthen  himself  with  all  these  new  impres- 
sions.   Above  all  he  wanted  to  feel  the  life- 
currents  of  Madrid  beating  about  his  migra- 
tory feet. 

A  few  minutes  before  he  had  been  sitting  up 
there  in  the  "peanut  gallery"  of  the  Teatro 
Real.  And  from  that  vulgar  place  he  had 
beheld  the  theater  with  its  vast  ranges  of  seats 
and  its  boxes  all  drenched  under  the  blinding 
dazzle  of  hundreds  of  electric  lights.  The  the- 
ater had  looked  to  him  like  some  rare  and 
beautiful  garden;  or  maybe  it  had  been  a  kind 
of  gigantic  nosegay,  where  the  sparkling  dia- 
monds on  women's  throats  had  seemed  dew- 
drops  caught  on  great  silk  petals,  on  glossy 
velvets,  on  white,  bare  shoulders, 

91 


92  THE  NECKLACE 


So  entirely  absorbed  had  he  been  in  this 
spectacle  that  he  had  hardly  paid  any  atten- 
tion at  all  to  what  the  orchestra  and  the  actors 
had  been  about.  Every  other  emotion  had 
been  shut  from  his  soul  by  these  dazzling  sight- 
impressions,  that  had  never  wearied  him.  The 
wonderful,  human  garden  spread  out  below 
him  had  exhaled  rare  perfumes.  A  sensual 
and  soporific  kind  of  vapor  had  risen  all  about 
him — an  incense  blent  of  the  odors  of  new- 
mown  hay,  of  jasmine,  musk  and  Parmesan 
violets,  of  daintily-bathed  women's  flesh,  of 
wonderful  lingerie.  And  he  had  studied  all 
this  luminous  picture,  resplendent  as  the  cli- 
max of  a  brilliant  play.  Above  all  he  had 
studied  the  women,  with  their  sensuous  bodies ; 
their  unashamed  bosoms  that  had  been  the  tar- 
gets of  analytical  eagerness  through  many 
opera-glasses;  their  gay  and  laughing  faces, 
whereof  the  beauty  had  been  enhanced  by  the 
placid  security  of  wealth.  He  had  observed 
their  deftly  combed  and  curled  little  heads, 
their  jewel-laden  hands — hands  that  had 
waved  big  feather-fans  to  and  fro  over  the 
gauzy  stuff  of  their  gowns. 

Enrique  wanted  to  see  all  this  wonderful 
world  at  close  range,  so  he  went  down  to  the 


THE  NECKLACE  93 

foyer.  And  there  he  stopped,  just  a  bit 
ashamed  of  himself.  For  the  first  time  he  was 
beginning  to  realize  that  his  out-of-date  slouch 
hat,  his  skimpy  black  suit  that  made  him  look 
like  a  high-school  boy,  and  his  old  boots  that 
needed  a  shine  were  greatly  out  of  place.  He 
felt  that  his  flowing  necktie,  which  he  had  tried 
to  knot  up  with  student-like  carelessness,  was 
just  as  ugly  as  all  the  rest  of  him.  Correctly 
dressed  men  were  passing  all  about  him,  with 
elegant  frock-coats  that  bore  flowers  in  their 
buttonholes  and  with  impeccable  Tuxedos. 
Women  were  regally  trailing  grosgrain  and 
watered-silk  skirts  over  the  soft,  red  carpet. 
It  all  seemed  a  majestic  symphony  of  silks, 
brocades  and  splendid  furs,  of  wonderful 
ankles  glimpsed  through  the  perverse  mystery 
of  open-work  stockings,  of  fascinating  adorn- 
ments, of  bracelets  whose  bangles  tinkled  their 
golden  song  on  the  ermine  whiteness  of  soft 
arms. 

Abashed,  feeling  himself  wholly  out  of 
place,  young  Darles  self-consciously  strolled 
over  to  look  at  a  bust  of  Gayarre — a  bronze 
bust  that  showed  the  man  with  short,  up-tossed 
hair.  Its  energy  made  one  think  of  Othello. 
Quite  at  once,  a  hand  dropped  familiarly  on 


94  THE  NECKLACE 

DarleY   shoulder.     The  young  man  turned. 

"Don  Manuel!    You?    What  a  surprise!" 

Don  Manuel  was  a  man  of  middle  height, 
thick-set  and  just  a  trifle  bald.  He  looked 
about  fifty.  A  heavy,  curling  red  beard  cov- 
ered his  full-blooded,  fleshy,  prosperous  cheeks 
and  chin.  He  wore  evening-dress.  His  short, 
thick,  epicurean  nose  supported  gold-bowed 
spectacles. 

"Well,  my  boy,"  he  exclaimed.  "You,  here?" 

Enrique  blushed  violently,  without  exactly 
understanding  why,  as  he  answered: 

"Yes,  I  came  to — to  see " 

Hardly  knowing  what  he  was  about,  he  took 
off  his  hat,  with  that  respect  we  learn  even  as 
children,  when  confronted  by  our  parents' 
friends.  Now  he  stood  there,  holding  the  hat 
with  both  hands  across  his  breast.  Don  Man- 
uel, you  know,  was  a  deputy  in  the  National 
Assembly.  The  great  man  made  Enrique  put 
his  hat  on,  again. 

"What  are  you  doing  in  Madrid?"  asked  he. 

"Studying." 

"Law?" 

"No,  sir.    Medicine." 

"That's  a  first-rate  profession.  What  year 
are  you  in?" 


THE  NECKLACE  95 


"Freshman,"  answered  Darles,  and  smiled 
in  a  shamefaced  sort  of  way.  He  knew  his 
answers  were  short  and  clumsy,  and  the  feel- 
ing of  shabbiness  oppressed  him  more  than 
ever.  Don  Manuel  glanced  about  him,  with  a 
kind  of  arrogant  ease.  Two  or  three  times  he 
murmured:  "I'm  waiting  for  somebody." 
Then  he  began  to  talk  to  the  student  again, 
asking  him  about  his  father  and  the  political 
boss  of  the  home  town.  Darles  kept  on 
answering  every  question  just  the  same 
way: 

"No  change,  down  there.  Everything's  all 
right." 

And  again  the  conversation  was  broken  off 
by  Don  Manuel's  expectant  glancing  about 
for  the  friend  he  was  to  meet. 

The  deputy  asked,  after  a  minute  or  two: 

"You're  living  in  a  boarding-house,  aren't 
you?" 

"No,  sir." 

"Where,  then?" 

"In  Calle  Ballesta.  I've  rented  a  little  in- 
side room,  on  the  fourth  floor.  It  costs  me 
thirteen  pesetas  a  month,  and  I  eat  at  a  little 
tavern  on  the  same  street." 

"I  see  you  know  how  to  rub  along.     You 


96  THE   NECKLACE 


can  save  money,  if  you're  willing  to  fight  with 
landladies.  After  you've  got  thoroughly  used 
to  Madrid,  nothing  can  make  you  ever  go  back 
home.  Madrid  is  wonderful!  With  money,  a 
clever  man  can  have  all  kinds  of  amusement 
here." 

Don  Manuel  added,  using  that  confidential 
air  with  which  fools  and  parvenus  try  to  im- 
press people  they  think  beneath  them: 

"See  here!  You're  not  a  boy,  any  more. 
And  I — hang  it  all! — you  can't  call  me  old, 
yet.  I  don't  see  my  friend  showing  up,  any- 
where, so  we  can  have  a  little  talk.  I've  got 
— I've  got  something  bothering  me.  You  un- 
derstand?" 

Enrique  nodded. 

"You  know  her?    Alicia  Pardo?" 

"No,  sir." 

"She's  very  popular,  in  the  gay  set.  A 
beauty!  At  the  Casino  we  call  her  'Little 
Goldie'." 

His  whole  expression  suddenly  changed. 
His  eyes  began  to  gleam,  with  joyful  glut- 
tony. The  congested  redness  of  his  cheeks 
grew  deeper,  and  he  turned  round,  stroking  his 
beard  and  straightening  up  his  top-hat  with 


THE  NECKLACE  97 


the  vanity  of  a  fool  who  thinks  people  are  ad- 
miring him. 

The  long,  sharp  trilling  of  electric  bells  an- 
nounced that  the  second  act  was  about  to  be- 
gin. Everybody  began  crowding  back  into 
the  theater;  and  now,  in  the  solitude  of  the  foy- 
er, the  bust  of  Gayarre  seemed  higher.  Don 
Manuel  exclaimed: 

"Come  along  with  me.  I'll  introduce  you  to 
Alicia." 

Don  Manuel  noticed  the  student's  dismayed 
look,  and  added: 

"That's  all  right  about  your  not  having  a 
dress-suit  on.  You  can  stay  in  the  rear  of  the 
box." 

He  started  off  with  a  firm  step,  trying  to 
assume  the  ease  and  grace  of  youth.  Enrique 
followed  him  without  a  word.  He  felt  both 
happy  and  afraid. 

They  reached  the  outer  box,  that  Don  Man- 
uel judged  good  enough  for  the  young  fellow. 
The  deputy  murmured: 

"This  is  all  right,  isn't  it?  I'll  see  you  later. 
You  can  see  everything,  here." 

Enrique  made  no  answer.  The  play  was 
already  going  on,  and  in  the  religious  stillness 
of  the  theater  the  chorus  of  the  piece  was  ris- 


98  THE  NECKLACE 

ing  in  triumphal  harmony.  It  was  one  of  those 
pleasant  Italian  operas,  freighted  for  all  of 
us  with  memories  of  youth.  Darles  ventured 
to  raise  one  of  the  heavy  curtains  just  a  little, 
that  shut  the  outer  box  off  from  the  inner  one. 
A  young  woman  was  sitting  there,  with  her 
back  to  him  and  her  elbows  on  the  railing  of 
the  box.  She  was  all  in  white.  He  could  see 
the  tempting  outlines  of  her  firm  hips,  beneath 
the  childish  insufficiency  of  her  girdle.  Her 
shoulders  were  plump  and  of  flawless  perfec- 
tion. On  the  snow  of  her  bare  neck  her  blonde 
hair,  tinged  with  red,  shadowed  tawny  reflec- 
tions. Two  splendid  emeralds  trembled,  green 
as  drops  of  absinthe,  in  the  rosy  lobes  of  her 
small,  fine  ears. 

Don  Manuel  was  beside  her.  Darles  noted 
that  Alicia  and  the  deputy  had  very  little  to 
say  to  each  other.  Suddenly  she  turned  her 
head  with  an  inquisitive  air,  graceful  and  fas- 
cinating; and  the  student  received  full  in  the 
eyes  the  shock  of  two  large,  green,  luminous 
pupils — living  emeralds,  indeed.  Her  scru- 
tiny of  him  was  short,  searching  and  curious; 
it  changed  to  an  expression  of  scorn. 

Darles  flushed  red  and  began  to  tremble. 
[Te  let  the  curtain  fall,  and  took  refuge  at  the 


THE  NECKLACE  99 

rear  of  the  outer  box.  His  first  impulse  was 
to  escape;  but  presently  he  changed  his  mind, 
for  it  seemed  to  him  more  than  a  little  rude  to 
take  French  leave.  The  student  thought  he 
was  bored,  but  in  reality  he  was  afraid.  In 
spite  of  his  agitation,  he  waited.  And  bit  by 
bit  the  magic  spell  of  the  opera  took  posses- 
sion of  him  and  freed  him  from  embarrass- 
ment. 

The  piece  now  going  on  was  one  of  those 
romantic,  wholly  lyric  poems  in  which  the  act- 
ors are  everything.  The  environment  about 
them,  the  sense  of  objectivity,  played  no  role. 
The  'cellos,  sighing  with  lassitude  and  pity, 
lamented  in  gentle  accord;  the  violins  cut 
through  the  harmony  with  sharp  cries  of  re- 
bellion and  gay  arpeggios.  And  the  voice  of 
the  tenor  rose  above  that  many-toned,  protean, 
orchestrated  poem  with  warm  persuasion, 
wailing  into  inconsolable  laments. 

Enrique  got  up  again,  and  once  more  tim- 
idly drew  apart  the  curtains  of  the  outer  box. 
Nobody  noticed  him.  Alicia  still  sat  there  with 
her  back  toward  him,  transfixed  by  the  fairy 
magic  of  the  opera.  Her  emotions  seemed  al- 
most to  transpire  through  the  white  skin  of  her 
back  and  shoulders.  Enrique  Darles  once  more 


100  THE  NECKLACE 

began  to  tremble.  His  ideas  grew  fantas- 
tic. When  he  had  seen  the  young  woman's 
eyes,  they  had  appeared  two  emeralds;  and 
now  the  emeralds  twinkling  beneath  the  blaze 
of  her  hair  seemed  to  be  looking  at  him  like 
two  pupils.  But  this  absurdity  soon  faded 
from  his  mind.  The  orchestra  was  languor- 
ously beginning  a  ritornelle;  and  all  through 
the  main  motif  independent  musical  phrases 
were  strung  like  beads.  These  slid  into  chro- 
matics, rising,  beating  up  to  lose  themselves  in 
one  vast  chord  of  agony  supreme.  And,  in 
that  huge  lamentation,  there  mingled  depths 
of  disillusion,  whispers  of  hope,  desires  and 
wearinesses,  laughter  and  grimaces — the  whole 
of  life,  indeed,  seemed  blent  there,  swift-pass- 
ing, tragic,  knotted  in  the  bitterness  of  every- 
thing that  ever  has  been  and  that  still  must  be. 
Enrique  sat  down  again.  Nameless  suffer- 
ing clutched  his  throat,  so  that  he  felt  a  pro- 
found desire  for  tears.  Like  a  motion-picture 
film,  both  past  and  present  flashed  across  his 
vision  in  swift  flight.  His  poor,  old  father  and 
the  little  chemist's  shop  at  home  appeared  be- 
fore him — the  miserable  shop  that  hardly  eked 
out  a  penurious  living  for  the  old  man.  Then 
he  saw  himself,  as  soon  as  his  studies  should  be 


THE  NECKLACE  101 

finished,  condemned  to  go  back  to  that  hate- 
ful, monotonous  little  town.  There  he  would 
labor  to  pay  back  his  parents  everything  they 
had  given  him ;  and  there  all  his  years  of  youth, 
all  his  love-illusions,  all  his  artistic  inspirations 
would  soon  fade.  There  he  must  bury  all  the 
finest  of  his  soul.  Then,  no  doubt,  he  would 
marry  and  have  children;  and  then — well,  life 
would  stretch  out  into  a  long,  straight  line, 
unwavering,  with  never  any  depths  or  heights, 
lost  in  the  monotony  of  a  blank  desert.  What 
could  be  more  terrible  than  to  know  just  what 
we  are  destined  to  be  in  ten  years,  in  twenty 
years,  in  thirty? 

The  poor  student  tugged  at  his  hair,  in  des- 
peration, and  tears  blurred  his  sight.  How 
he  would  have  loved  to  be  rich,  to  have  no 
family,  to  be  the  sport  of  the  unforeseen!  For 
is  not  the  unforeseen  pregnant  with  all  the 
vicissitudes  of  poetry?  He  felt  the  blood  of 
conquerors  pulsing  in  his  arteries,  the  energies 
of  bold  adventurers  who  dare  brave  perils  and 
emprise,  and  leave  their  bones  on  far-off 
shores.  This  fighting  strain,  this  crave  for 
danger,  filled  him  with  boundless  melancholy 
as  he  reflected  that  he  must  live  on,  on  to  old 
age,  and  do  no  differently  than  all  other  men 


102  THE  NECKLACE 

do,  year  by  year.  Destiny  meant  for  him  no 
more  than  this:  to  follow  a  costly,  hard  and 
tedious  career  merely  that  he  might  make  a 
pittance,  get  a  wife  and  find  some  hole  or  cor- 
ner to  live  in — some  poor,  mean  little  house 
in  a  world  of  palaces,  some  commonplace  love 
in  a  world  throbbing  with  so  many  passions, 
some  paltry  dole  in  a  world  crowded  with  so 
many  fortunes! 

Whipped  by  the  music,  the  foolish  grief  of 
Enrique  Darles  broke  into  sobs. 

Now  the  second  act  was  done,  and  Don 
Manuel  and  Alicia  came  into  the  outer  box. 
The  young  woman's  eyes — green,  eloquent 
eyes — filled  with  astonishment. 

"What?"  she  asked.     "You're  crying?" 

Before  the  student  could  answer,  she  turned 
to  her  companion  and  said: 

"What  do  you  think  about  that,  now?  He's 
been  crying!" 

In  shame,  Enrique  answered: 

"I  don't  know.  I — I'm  upset.  But — yes, 
maybe " 

She  smiled,  and  asked: 

"You've  got  a  sweetheart,  haven't  you?" 

"No,  no,  Senorita." 

"Well  then,  why ?" 


THE   NECKLACE  103 

"It's  all  foolishness,  I  know,  but  every  time 
I  hear  music — even  bad  music — it  makes  me 
sad." 

"That's  funny!    I  don't  feel  that  way!" 

The  red-faced,  thick-set  Don  Manuel 
shrugged  his  square  shoulders  as  much  as  to 
say  it  mattered  nothing,  and  introduced  them 
to  each  other.  Enrique's  feverish  hand  held 
for  a  moment  the  cool,  soft  hand — snow  and 
velvet — of  Little  Goldie.  Then  all  three  sat 
down  on  the  same  divan,  Alicia  between 
the  two  men.  Don  Manuel  drew  out  his  cigar- 
case. 

"Smoke?"  asked  he. 

"No,  thanks." 

"Good  boy!"  exclaimed  the  deputy.  "You 
haven't  any  vices,  have  you?" 

"What?"  asked  Alicia.  "You  don't  smoke?" 

"No,  Senorita." 

"How  funny  you  are!    Well,  /  do!" 

Enrique  blushed  again,  and  looked  down. 
He  saw  quite  clearly  that  this  little  detail  made 
the  beggarliness  of  his  clothes  even  more  no- 
ticeable. Women  always  seem  to  like  a  man 
to  smoke.  Tobacco  is  their  best  perfume.  The 
student  felt  furious  at  himself.  To  regain 
countenance  before  this  girl  he  would  gladly 


104  THE   NECKLACE 

have  consumed  all  the  Egyptian  or  Turkish 
cigarettes  in  Don  Manuel's  case.  But  it  was 
too  late,  now.  Opportunity  was  gone ;  oppor- 
tunity, that  master-magic  which  endues  every- 
thing with  grace  and  worth. 

The  young  woman's  self-possession  was 
quite  English  in  its  cool  perfection  as  she 
lighted  up  and  fell  to  smoking,  with  one  leg 
crossed  over  the  other.  She  leaned  her  shoul- 
ders against  the  dun-hued  back  of  the  divan. 
And  now,  all  about  her  diabolical,  reddish- 
gold  hair,  the  cigarette-smoke  mounted  thinly 
on  the  quiet  air,  and  wove  blue  veils.  Darles 
observed  her,  from  the  corner  of  his  eye.  Her 
face  was  aquiline,  with  wide  nostrils,  with  a 
little  blood-red,  cruel  mouth  and  a  low  fore- 
head that  gave  the  impression  of  hard,  in- 
stinctive selfishness.  Her  big,  greenish  eyes 
peered  out  with  boredom  and  command.  Her 
whole  expression  was  cold,  keen,  probing,  piti- 
less. 

A  string  of  seed-pearls  girdled  her  soft,  rosy 
throat.  Her  fingers  blazed  with  the  fire  of  her 
rings.  Her  nails  were  sharp  as  claws.  In  the 
well-harmonized  rhythms  of  her  every  atti- 
tude, in  all  her  perfect  modelings,  in  every  nu- 
ance and  detail  of  her — wonderful  plaything 


THE   NECKLACE  105 

for  men's  dalliance — Enrique,  untutored  coun- 
try boy  though  he  was,  discerned  a  supremely 
selfish  ego.  He  realized  this  woman  was 
one  of  those  emotionless  creatures  of  willful- 
ness, wholly  self -centered,  who  are  incapable 
of  sorrow. 

Don  Manuel's  mood  was  brusque,  with  that 
brusquerie  of  a  rich,  healthy  man  who  has  a 
pretty  woman  in  tow,  as  he  exclaimed: 

"Well  now,  Enrique,  how  do  you  like  my 
Little  Goldie?  I  bet  you  never  saw  anything 
like  her,  back  home!"  Triumphantly  he 
added:  "She  doesn't  cost  much,  either.  When 
I  first  met  her,  I  asked:  'What  shall  I  give 
you?'  She  answered:  'A  box  at  the  Teatro 
Real.'  Why,  that's  a  bagatelle!  Only  a  little 
more  than  thirteen  hundred  pesetas  for  four- 
teen plays.  And  here  we  are.  I  tell  you  the 
little  lady  doesn't  ask  much." 

Darles  answered  nothing.  .  His  emotions 
choked  him — the  novelty  of  this  new  world 
that  till  now  he  had  not  even  known  by  hear- 
say; a  topsy-turvy,  unmoral  world  where,  as 
in  art,  beauty  formed  the  only  criterion  of 
worth;  a  world  where  women  sold  themselves 
for  an  opera-box. 

All  this  time  Alicia  Pardo  had  been  study- 


106  THE  NECKLACE 

ing  Enrique.  The  downright  frankness  of  her 
look  was  alarming  in  its  amusement.  En- 
rique's extreme  youth;  the  simplicity  of  his 
answers ;  the  Apollo-like  perfection  of  his  fea- 
tures ;  the  obsidian  hue  of  his  wavy  hair  which 
marked  him  as  from  the  south  of  Spain;  the 
black  ardor  of  eyes,  that  in  their  eager  curios- 
ity contrasted  with  the  boyish  smoothness  of 
his  face;  yes,  even  his  proneness  to  blush,  had 
all  greatly  interested  her.  Above  all,  Alicia 
found  her  attention  wakened  by  the  artistic 
spirit  in  him,  which  had  wept  at  the  sound  of 
the  music.  Alicia  had  never  seen  men  weep 
except  through  jealousy,  or  through  some  oth- 
er even  baser  and  more  ignoble  emotion. 
Therefore  in  the  tears  of  this  boy  she  discov- 
ered something  wonderful  and  great. 

And  through  her  little  head,  all  filled  with 
curious  whims,  the  idea  drifted  that  it  would 
be  passing  strange  and  sweet  to  let  herself  be 
loved  by  such  a  boy.  Suddenly  she  exclaimed : 

"What  are  you  doing  in  Madrid?" 

"I'm  studying." 

"Ah,  indeed?  A  student,  eh?  I  read  a  nov- 
el, a  while  ago,  that  I  liked  very  much  indeed. 
The  hero  was  a  student.  Quite  a  coincidence, 
eh?" 


THE  NECKLACE  107 

Darles  nodded  "Yes."  The  childish  sim- 
plicity of  the  remark  amazed  him.  Goldie 
went  on: 

"How  old  are  you?" 

"Twenty." 

"Honest  and  true?" 

"Fact!    Why?    Maybe  I  look  older?" 

"No,  you  don't.  Younger,  I  think.  I'm 
not  quite  nineteen,  but  I  do  look  older." 

Don  Manuel  had  opened  a  newspaper,  and 
was  reading  the  latest  market  quotations. 
Alicia  felt  a  desire  to  know  the  boy's  name. 
She  asked  him  what  it  was. 

"Enrique?"  she  repeated.  "That's  a  pretty 
name.  Very !" 

Then  she  grew  silent  a  while,  remembering 
all  the  Enriques  she  had  ever  known — and 
there  had  been  plenty  of  them.  She  recalled 
they'd  all  been  nice.  Thus,  reviewing  her  life- 
history,  she  reached  her  childish  years;  quiet 
years  of  peace,  lived  in  the  Virgilian  simplicity 
of  the  country.  And  she  seemed  to  see  in  this 
boy,  innocent,  healthy  and  sun-browned, 
something  of  what  she  herself  had  been. 

Quite  beside  himself  with  new  emotions,  eo 
Static  and  open-mouthed,  the  student  looked  at 


108  THE   NECKLACE 

her,  too,  like  a  man  studying  some  unusually 
beautiful  work  of  art. 

Now  many  footfalls  echoed  in  the  corridors 
again  and  bells  began  to  ring.  A  flood  of  spec- 
tators began  to  fill  up  the  seats.  The  third 
act  was  going  to  begin.  Alicia  and  Don  Man- 
uel got  up. 

"Going  to  stay?"  the  deputy  asked  Darles. 

"No,  thanks." 

"Why  not?" 

"Because — well,  I've  got  to  go  to  bed  early. 
To-morrow  I'm  going  to  get  up  early." 

He  felt  so  sure  that  Alicia  might  be  able  to 
love  him,  and  so  overpowered  by  the  happy 
embarrassment  of  this  thought,  that  he  wanted 
to  be  alone,  to  enjoy  it  more  fully.  Don  Man- 
uel added: 

"Well,  suit  yourself.  Any  time  you  want 
to  see  me,  don't  go  to  my  house.  I'm  never 
there.  Better  go  to  Alicia's.  You'll  find  me 
there  every  evening,  from  six  to  eight." 

They  took  leave  of  each  other.  Enrique 
turned  his  head,  as  he  left  the  box,  and  his  eyes 
met  the  girl's.  Their  look  was  a  meeting  of 
caresses,  as  if  they  had  given  each  other  a  kiss 
and  made  a  rendezvous.  It  was  one  of  those 
terrible  Jooks,  capable  of  changing  the  whole 


THE   NECKLACE  109 

current  of  a  man's  life — a  look  such  as  a  man 
will  sometimes  receive  in  his  youth,  only  to 
find  it  hounding  and  pursuing  him  his  whole 
life  long. 


II 


NEXT  day,  Alicia  spent  the  evening 
before  her  fireplace,  with  a  book. 
Don  Manuel's  visit  to  her  had  end- 
ed in  a  quarrel,  and  he  had  gone. 
A  great  nervousness  possessed  the  girl;  she 
wanted  to  cry,  to  yawn,  to  pull  out  her  hair, 
to  kick  the  little  cabinets  from  behind  whose 
crystal  panes  all  kinds  of  little  figurines,  por- 
celain dolls  and  extravagant  bibelots  peeped 
out  with  roguish  faces. 

No  one  who  has  never  been  really  bored  can 
grasp  the  complete  horror,  the  abysmal  black- 
ness, the  silence  like  that  of  a  bottomless  pit 
or  an  endless  tunnel,  which  lies  in  absolute 
boredom.  Still,  just  as  death  is  the  beginning 
of  life,  so  at  times  tedium  can  become  a  spring 
of  vigorous  action.  Many  men  have  sown  wild 
oats  in  their  youth  till  they  have  tired  of  them, 
and  have  in  riper  years  become  model  hus- 
bands, applied  themselves  to  business  and  died 
leaving  millions.  Boredom  sometimes  turns 
out  works  of  art.  Had  not  Heine  and  Byron 

no 


THE   NECKLACE  111 

been  monumentally  bored,  they  could  never 
have  risen  to  the  heights  of  song. 

Now,  though  Alicia  Pardo  was  very  young, 
she  already  suffered  from  this  malady — the 
malady  of  quietude  which  rubs  out  boundary- 
lines  and  extinguishes  contrasts.  Never  yet 
had  she  been  in  love.  The  selfishness  of  her 
lovers  had  in  the  end  endowed  her  soul — itself 
little  inclined  to  tenderness — with  all  the  hard- 
ness of  a  diamond. 

"I  can't  love  any  one,"  she  often  said.  "I've 
made  a  regular  man  of  myself." 

Since  the  human  mind  cannot  long  remain 
unoccupied  by  real  emotions,  she  had  come  to 
adore  luxury.  She  was  neither  miserly  nor 
greedy  for  money;  but  she  did  indeed  love 
purple  and  fine  linen,  noisy  hats  and  precious 
stones  glimmering  with  sunlight.  Her  idea  of 
life  was  to  buy  good  furnishings,  appear  in 
new  gowns,  show  herself  off,  waste  everything 
without  restraint.  With  her  pretty  hands, 
now  craving  money  and  now  throwing  it  to 
the  four  winds,  she  made  ducks  and  drakes  of 
men's  fortunes.  She  had  many  things  and 
wanted  more ;  and  as  one  quickly  tires  of  what 
one  has,  her  property  did  not  increase. 

The  young  woman  was  in  high  dudgeon, 


112  THE  NECKLACE 

that  evening.  She  knew  not  what  to  do.  Her 
money  was  running  short,  and  that  morning 
in  a  bazaar  she  had  seen  all  kinds  of  pretty 
gewgaws.  She  had  taken  up  a  book  to  amuse 
herself,  but  had  not  been  able  to  read  much. 
Her  irritation  would  not  go  away.  Why 
couldn't  she  be  infinitely  rich?  Already  she 
was  beginning  to  consider  this  poor  life  of  ours 
a  grotesque  affair — this  life  in  which  so  many 
men  think  themselves  happy  in  the  possession 
of  the  ten-millionth  part  of  what  they  really 
want. 

It  was  almost  seven  o'clock  when  Enrique 
Darles  arrived.  As  soon  as  Alicia  saw  the 
student,  she  heaved  a  sigh  of  contentment  and 
threw  the  book  into  the  fire. 

"What  are  you  doing,  there?"  cried  Darles, 
to  whom  every  book  was  sacred. 

"Nothing,"  she  answered.  "It's  a  stupid 
novel.  We  ought  to  do  the  same  with  every- 
thing that  bores  us." 

Enrique  sat  down  and  asked: 

"Don  Manuel—?" 

"He's  been  here  a  while,  but  he's  gone.  I 
mean,  I  sent  him  away.  I  tell  you  I'm  un- 
bearable, to-day.  I'd  like  to  fight  with  every- 
body. I  don't  know  what  I  wouldn't  give  to 


THE  NECKLACE  113 

feel  some  new  sensation — something  real  and 
strong.  I'm  in  despair,  I  tell  you!  It's  these 
nerves,  these  cursed  nerves,  that  wake  up 
everything  ugly  and  vulgar  in  us.  To-day  is 
one  of  the  black  days  when  even  the  good  luck 
of  our  friends  makes  us  miserable." 

She  stopped  and  peered  closely  at  Darles. 
His  close-shaven  face,  his  southern  eyes  and 
wavy  black  hair  made  him  look  like  some  hand- 
some, gentle  boy. 

"I'm  strange,"  she  continued.  "I'm  a  chat- 
ter-box, ungrateful  and  never  able  to  love  any- 
thing very  long.  That's  why  you  attracted 
my  attention  the  first  minute.  You  look  like 
a  man  of  strong  passions.  I  like  radical  char- 
acters, good  or  bad.  I  like  iron  wills.  Luke- 
warm temperaments,  undecided  and  ready  to 
fit  into  any  situation,  look  to  me  like  half -sea- 
son clothes  that  are  always  disagreeable.  In 
summer  they're  too  warm  and  in  winter  too 
cold." 

Darles  ventured  to  say  with  some  timidity: 

"What's  the  reason  you're  put  out  to-day?" 

"I  don't  know." 

"What?" 

"It's  true.    Unless  it  might  be " 


THE  NECKLACE 


She  stopped,  inwardly  searching  her 
thoughts,  then  went  on: 

"It's  because  you're  very  young  that  my 
words  astonish  you.  Sometime  you'll  be  old- 
er, and  then  you'll  understand  the  world  bet- 
ter. You'll  know  the  cause  of  all  these  little 
vexations  that  embitter  life  can't  be  found  in 
concrete  facts.  We  have  to  recognize  such 
vexations  as  the  total,  the  corollary  of  our 
whole  history,  of  everything  we've  lived 
through.  For  example,  we're  sad  now  because 
we  were  sad  before,  or  maybe  gay.  In  to- 
day's tears  you'll  find  the  bitter-aloes  of  the 
tears  of  long  ago  ;  and  there's  the  weariness  of 
dead  laughter  there,  too.  Understand?  Don't 
wonder,  therefore,  that  you  can't  comprehend 
exactly  why  I'm  in  such  a  bad  temper,  to- 
day." 

She  grew  quiet,  sinking  down  into  a  brown 
study  that  drew  a  vertical  line  upon  her  pretty 
brow.  Then  she  asked: 

"Do  you  often  go  through  Calle  Mayor?" 

"Yes.    Why?" 

"Do  you  remember  the  jeweler's  shop  on 
the  right,  on  the  even-numbered  side,  near  the 
Puerta  del  Sol?" 

The  student  nodded, 


THE   NECKLACE  115 


"Well,  if  you  like  jewels,"  continued  Alicia, 
"take  a  look  at  that  emerald  necklace  in  the 
middle  of  the  window.  I  just  happened  to 
see  it,  to-day,  and  it  made  such  an  impression 
on  me  that  I  haven't  been  able  to  get  it  out 
of  my  mind.  It's  magnificent,  not  only  in  size 
and  in  the  wonderful  luster  of  the  stone,  but 
also  on  account  of  its  splendid  clasp." 

"Worth  a  lot,  eh?" 

"Fifteen  thousand  pesetas." 

Darles  said  nothing  to  this.  But  his  brows 
lifted  with  admiration.  Such  figures  filled  his 
provincial  simplicity  with  panic  and  confusion. 
By  comparison  with  the  miserable  shallowness 
of  his  purse,  they  seemed  enormous.  Little 
Goldie  continued: 

"I  told  Don  Manuel  about  it,  but  he's  a 
clever  fox.  He's  a  sly  one!  There's  no  way 
in  this  world  to  rake  him  into  spending  any  ex- 
tra money.  That's  partly  what  we've  just  now 
been  quarreling  about.  Believe  me,  it's  men's 
own  fault  if  we  aren't  more  faithful  to  them." 

Ignorant  as  he  was  of  feminine  psychology, 
Enrique  understood  that  Alicia's  black  humor 
was  on  account  of  that  emerald  necklace  she  so 
deeply  admired  and  so  greatly  wanted.  Un- 
satisfied desires  are  like  undigested  foods.  At 


116  THE  NECKLACE 

first  they  cause  us  a  vague  ill-ease,  which  soon 
increases  until  indigestion  sets  in.  Following 
this  same  line  of  thought,  is  not  disappoint- 
ment or  grief,  in  a  way,  the  indigestion  of  a 
caprice?  Ingenuously,  without  realizing  the 
indiscretion  of  promising  anything  to  women 
or  children,  Enrique  exclaimed: 

"If  I  were  only  rich — 1" 

The  pause  that  followed  was  like  that  in  a 
romance;  one  of  those  silences  during  which 
women  decide  to  do  any  and  everything.  Then 
all  at  once,  with  the  same  bored  gesture  she 
had  used  when  she  had  tossed  the  book  into 
the  fire,  Alicia  put  one  of  her  little  hands  into 
the  bony,  trembling  hands  of  the  student. 

"Do  you  like  my  hands?"  she  queried. 

"Enormously!" 

"People  say  they're  very  big." 

"Oh,  no!    Very  small,  indeed!" 

With  ravishment  he  examined  the  fine  soft- 
ness of  her  wrist,  the  wandering  lines  traced 
by  the  blue  veins  beneath  the  whiteness  of  the 
skin,  the  little  dimples  that  adorned  the  back 
of  her  hand.  That  hand  was  an  artist's,  a 
dancer's.  Its  fingers  were  showily  covered 
with  rings.  Alicia  studied  these  rings.  In 
their  settings,  the  sapphires,  the  blood-red  ru- 


THE  NECKLACE  117 

bies,  the  topazes  and  diamonds  filled  with  light 
blent  into  bouquets  of  tiny,  never-fading  flow- 
ers. 

"Next  time  you  go  through  Calle  Mayor," 
directed  the  young  woman,  "take  a  good  look 
at  the  necklace  I've  told  you  about.  There  are 
two  necklaces  in  the  window.  One  is  of  black 
pearls,  the  other  of  emeralds.  I'm  talking 
about  the  emerald  one.  You'll  find  it  a  little 
to  the  left,  on  a  bust  of  white  velvet." 

The  vision  of  the  precious  stones  persisted 
in  her  memory  with  the  tenacity  of  an  obses- 
sion. It  filled  her  mind  and  dominated  all  her 
thoughts  with  a  dangerous  kind  of  introspec- 
tive tyranny. 

Eight  o'clock  sounded.  Enrique  Darles  got 
up. 

"Going,  already?"  asked  the  girl. 

"Yes,  I'm  going  to  supper." 

She  looked  him  over,  from  head  to  foot,  and 
saw  that  he  was  slender,  with  an  almost  child- 
ish beauty,  as  he  stood  there  in  his  modest  suit 
of  black.  Then  she  thought  about  having  noth- 
ing to  do,  that  night,  and  how  horribly  bored 
she  was  going  to  be. 

"Why  not  stay  here  and  have  a  bite  with 
me?"  she  questioned, 


118  THE  NECKLACE 

"What  for?"  he  demanded. 

"What  a  question  \  Why,  so  we  shan't  have 
to  separate,  so  soon." 

"I — well,  all  right.  Anything  you  like.  But 
I'm  afraid  I'll  bother  you." 

"What  an  idiot  you  are!  Quite  the  con- 
trary. Your  conversation  will  amuse  me. 
You'll  see  how  quickly  I'll  be  good-natured, 
again." 

She  got  up  with  a  swift,  supple  movement 
that  made  her  petticoats  rustle  and  that  in- 
fused a  perfume  of  violets  through  the  room. 
She  pressed  an  electric  button.  A  maid  ap- 
peared. 

"Tell  Leonor,"  she  ordered,  "that  I  have  a 
guest.  Senor  Enrique  is  going  to  have  sup- 
per with  me." 

She  approached  a  mirror,  to  arrange  her 
hair.  She  seemed  happy,  transfigured  with 

joy. 

"Have  you  seen  the  play  they're  giving  at 
the  Princess  Theater  to-night?"  asked  she. 

"No,  I  haven't." 

"They  say  it's  awfully  good.  Shall  we  take 
it  in?  There's  time  enough,  yet.  We'll  have 
supper  right  away." 

Darles  felt  a  bit  disconcerted,  and  secretly 


THE  NECKLACE  119 

investigated  his  pockets,  estimating  the  money 
he  had.  Mentally  he  counted: 

"Five  pesetas,  ten,  fifteen." 

Yes,  there  was  enough  for  two  seats  and  a 
carriage  to  come  back  in. 

"All  right,  just  as  you  like,"  he  answered, 
more  reassured. 

"Then  I'll  go  change  my  dress.  I'll  be  back 
in  a  minute." 

She  vanished  behind  the  crimson  curtain 
that  draped  the  door  of  her  bedroom.  The 
student  heard  a  little  rustling  of  lingerie  that 
slid  to  the  floor.  He  heard  corset-steels  being 
tightened  over  a  soft  breast ;  heard  mysterious, 
silken  sounds  of  undressing  and  of  dressing; 
heard  closet-doors  vivaciously  opened  and 
shut. 

Enrique  felt  upset  and  very  happy.  He 
had  known  Alicia  more  than  a  month.  During 
that  time,  using  his  visits  to  Don  Manuel  as  a 
pretext,  he  had  seen  the  young  woman  several 
times.  In  spite  of  the  intimacy  of  these  calls 
he  had  never  dared  let  the  girl  see  his  love.  His 
innocence  had  been  too  great  to  let  him  ap- 
proach any  such  difficult  avowal.  When  Alicia 
had  tried  to  help  him  out  of  the  embarrass- 
ment she  had  seen  in  him,  and  had  tried  to  turn 


120  THE  NECKLACE 

the  conversation  into  confidential  channels,  he 
had  evaded  declaring  himself.  For  he  had 
been  afraid  of  making  some  stupid  blunder  and 
of  appearing  absurd. 

But  now  he  felt  calmer,  more  self-confident. 
Without  quite  understanding  why,  he  suspect- 
ed that  Alicia's  ill-humor  was  working  to  his 
benefit.  She  was  keeping  him  with  her  be- 
cause she  was  bored,  because  she  was  afraid  to 
pass  the  night  alone  with  that  gnawing  desire 
for  the  jewels  that  in  all  probability  could 
never  be  hers.  And  Enrique  reflected  that  the 
necklace,  made  to  encircle  some  wonderful 
throat,  might  become  the  symbol  of  a  bond 
of  love  now  growing  up  between  them. 

Then  he  realized  there  was  something  sweet 
and  intimate  in  the  confidence  Alicia  mani- 
fested by  dressing  so  very  near  him,  and  in  the 
complacency  shown  by  the  maid  when  Alicia 
had  told  her  that  Senor  Enrique  was  taking 
supper  there.  These  were  important  details 
that  roused  up  his  failing  heart  and  made  him 
understand  that  all  this — if  his  own  cowardice 
were  not  too  great — might  lead  to  something 
much  more  complete  and  exquisite  than  a  mere 
chaste,  warm  friendship. 

Enrique  lost  himself  in  pleasant  fancies.  He 


THE  NECKLACE  121 

remembered  many  novels  in  which  the  daring 
and  eloquent  heroes  had  taken  part  in  situa- 
tions quite  parallel  to  this  now  confronting 
him,  poor  country  boy  that  he  was.  The  bev- 
eled mirror  of  a  clothes-press  flung  back  at 
him  the  reflection  of  his  tall,  slim  body,  his 
black  clothes,  his  rather  poetic  face.  Pale, 
beardless,  romantic-looking,  why  might  not  he 
be  a  hero,  too?  What  surprises  might  not  des- 
tiny have  in  store  for  his  youthfulness  ? 

To  calm  himself  he  began  looking  at  the 
little  bronze  and  porcelain  figures  in  the  cab- 
inets. There  were  cowled  gnomes,  dogs,  cats 
looking  into  a  little  mirror,  with  astonished 
grimaces.  Then  Darles  studied  the  marble 
clock  and  the  big  vases  on  the  chimney-piece. 
He  examined  the  portraits  and  the  little  fancy 
pictures,  of  slight  merit  but  gaudily  framed, 
that  covered  the  green  wall-paper  almost  to 
the  ceiling.  And  in  a  kind  of  analytical  way 
he  reflected  that  these  portraits,  these  little 
paintings,  these  pretty,  frivolous  furnishings 
were  the  aftermath  of  all  the  mercenary  love- 
affairs  which  had  taken  place  here  in  this 
apartment. 

His  attention  was  now  called  to  a  large  col- 
lection of  picture  post-cards  stuck  into  a  Jap- 


122  THE  NECKLACE 

anese  screen.  There  were  dancers,  love-mak- 
ing scenes  and  all  sorts  of  things.  Nearly 
every  card  bore  the  signature  of  some  man, 
together  with  a  line  or  two  of  dedication. 
Many  of  the  cards  were  dated  from  Paris — 
that  City  of  the  Sun,  beloved  by  adventurers 
— while  others  had  come  from  America,  from 
Egypt  or  elsewhere.  And  all  the  cards  seemed 
a  kind  of  incense  offered  to  the  beauty  of  the 
same  woman.  Through  all  the  longings  of 
exile,  and  from  every  zone,  memories  had  come 
back  to  her.  You  might  almost  have  thought 
the  warmth  of  her  flesh  had  infused  a  death- 
less glow  in  all  those  wanderers. 

Alicia  Pardo  came  in  again,  bringing  with 
her  a  gust  of  violet  perfume. 

"Have  I  kept  you  waiting  long?"  asked  she. 
"I  hope  not.  Come  on,  now,  let's  go  to  the 
dining-room.  If  we  want  to  get  to  the  theater 
in  time,  we  mustn't  lose  a  minute." 

It  was  a  light,  pleasant  supper — vegetable 
soup,  partridges  a  I'anglaise,  lobster  and  crisp 
bacon,  then  a  bit  of  orange  marmalade  and 
dead-ripe  bananas.  At  the  theater,  they  had 
a  couple  of  seats  in  the  second  row.  The  play 
had  already  begun,  when  they  got  there.  None 
the  less,  Goldie's  presence  roused  up  inter- 


THE   NECKLACE  123 

est  among  the  masculine  element  in  the  boxes. 
Numbers  of  opera-glasses  focused  themselves 
at  her.  On  the  stage,  an  actor  profited  by  one 
of  his  exits  to  give  her  an  almost  imperceptible 
smile,  to  which  she  replied  with  a  nod. 

Such  marks  of  attention  usually  fill  men  of 
the  world  with  pride  and  complacency.  But 
they  disturb  young  lovers.  According  to  the 
temperaments  of  such  youthful  blades,  public 
recognition  of  this  kind  excites  jealousy  or 
shame.  Enrique  Darles  felt  suppressed  and 
ill  at  ease.  A  wave  of  hot  blood  burned  in  his 
cheeks.  Not  for  one  instant  did  it  occur  to 
him  that  these  grave,  rich  gentlemen — old  men 
who  never  win  the  favors  of  the  demi-monde 
along  the  flowery  path  of  real  affection — might 
be  envying  his  beauty  and  his  youth. 

Alicia  felt,  in  the  student's  silence,  some- 
thing of  the  embarrassment  that  possessed 
him. 

"What's  the  matter  with  you?"  asked  she. 
"Are  you  ashamed  of  being  seen  with  me?" 

Enrique  tried  to  seem  astonished. 

"Ashamed?"  he  repeated.  "How  could  I 
be?  On  the  contrary " 

And  his  fingers  closed  over  hers  with  un- . 
speakable  ardor, 


124  THE   NECKLACE 

At  the  end  of  the  act,  the  audience  began  to 
applaud.  Many  enthusiastic  voices  called: 
"Author!  Author!"  Alicia  clapped  her  hands 
wildly. 

"Oh,  how  I'd  like  to  know  him!"  cried  she. 

Enrique  also  applauded  noisily,  to  please 
her.  The  curtain  rose  again,  in  the  midst  of 
that  uproarious  tempest  of  triumph,  and  the 
author  appeared.  His  profile  was  aquiline; 
his  theatrical  triumphs  and  loose  way  of  liv- 
ing had  enveloped  him  in  a  cloud  of  prestige, 
blent  of  talent  and  scandal.  He  looked  a  little 
above  forty,  but  his  lithe  body  still  kept  all 
the  graceful  activity  of  youth.  The  spot-light 
brilliantly  illuminated  him ;  he  smiled,  with  the 
arrogant  expression  and  gestures  of  a  con- 
queror. Still  applauding,  Alicia  exclaimed  to 
Enrique : 

"Isn't  he  lovely?  I've  got  to  get  some  one 
to  introduce  me  to  him.  My  friend  Candelas 
knows  him  very  well." 

And  her  big  green  eyes  widened  with  emo- 
tion. Her  curly  reddish  hair  shook  like  a  lion's 
mane,  over  her  willful  forehead.  At  that  mo- 
ment, Enrique  Darles  once  more  felt  himself 
small  and  obscure.  He  saw  his  love  meant 
nothing  in  the  exuberant  life  of  this  girl.  While 


THE   NECKLACE  125 

he  had  been  holding  her  pretty  little  hand,  a 
few  minutes  before,  he  had  thought  her  con- 
quered and  in  love  with  him.  Now  all  of  a 
sudden  he  beheld  her  transfigured,  beside  her- 
self, her  scatter-brained  little  head  flung  back 
in  an  attitude  of  giving,  that  offered  the  vic- 
torious playwright  her  snowy  throat.  Ethno- 
logical reasons  underlie  woman's  adoration  of 
everything  strong,  shining,  violent. 

"If  I  were  not  here,"  thought  Darles  with 
melancholy,  "surely  she  would  go  to  him." 

The  student  got  back  his  gayety,  during  the 
second  act.  Alicia  pressed  up  against  him, 
slyly  and  nervously,  and  her  restless  curls  pro- 
duced little  electric  ticklings  on  his  temples. 
When  the  play  was  done,  the  ovation  broke 
out  again,  and  the  author  once  more  appeared. 
Enrique's  applause  was  only  mild.  For  a 
moment  he  thought  the  playwright's  eyes  fell 
with  avidity  on  Alicia.  This  painful  impres- 
sion still  lay  upon  the  student  as  they  went  out 
into  the  street.  The  young  woman  walked 
beside  him,  holding  his  arm  and  shivering  with 
cold  in  her  handsome  gray  cloak.  The  night 
was  sharp.  Rain  had  been  falling.  Alicia 
said: 

"Well,  where  are  we  going?" 


126  THE   NECKLACE 

He  answered,  in  surprise: 

"I'm  going  to  take  you  home.  We'll  call  a 
carriage." 

"No,  I  don't  want  to  go  home." 

"What?" 

"Come  on!  I'm  going  to  give  you  a  treat, 
to-night." 

She  looked  up  at  him,  smiling  in  a  fascinat- 
ing, promising  way  that  foreshadowed  para- 
dise. In  anguish  the  poor  fellow  remembered 
he  had  hardly  ten  pesetas  left.  To  escape  the 
jostling  and  rude  staring  of  the  passers-by, 
Alicia  took  refuge  in  a  doorway.  Her  feet 
were  stiff  with  cold.  The  wetness  of  the  pave- 
ment was  soaking  through  the  thin  soles  of  her 
shoes. 

"Decide  on  something,  quick,"  she  shivered. 
"I'm  dying  of  cold!" 

Enrique  exclaimed,  with  a  resolution  he 
thought  very  like  that  of  a  man  of  the  world: 

"If  you  want  to  eat,  we'll  go  to  Fornos." 

The  girl  made  a  grimace  of  horror. 

"Never!"  she  cried.  "Everybody  knows 
me  there!" 

"Well  then,  let's  go  to  Moran's." 

"Worse  still!  I'd  be  sure  to  run  into  some 
friend  or  other." 


THE   NECKLACE  127 

"How  about  Vina  P?" 

"I  should  say  not!  I  don't  dare."  Then 
with  cruel  frankness  she  added:  "Do  you 
know  why  I  don't  dare?  The  women  there 
look  down  on  girls  like  me.  And  if  any  of  my 
friends — they're  all  serious  men — should  see 
me  with  you,  there,  they'd  call  me  flighty. 
They'd  think  me  mad." 

Enrique  understood  but  little.  He  vaguely 
felt,  however,  that  all  this  held  some  kind  of 
humiliation  for  him.  Suddenly,  like  one  who 
clutches  at  a  saving  idea,  Alicia  exclaimed: 

"What  time  is  it?" 

"Quarter  past  one." 

"Well  then,  see  here.  Let's  go  to  Las  Ven- 
tas,  or  La  Bombilla.  The  same  carriage  that 
takes  us  out  can  bring  us  back." 

"Well— it " 

He  hesitated,  knowing  not  how  to  confess 
his  absurdity,  how  to  own  up  to  the  enormous, 
unpardonable  stupidity  of  being  poor.  At 
last  he  made  up  his  mind  to  speak,  wounded 
by  the  questions  of  Alicia,  who  by  no  means 
understood  his  uncertainty. 

"You  know,  I — forgive  me,  but — I  haven't 
got  money  enough,"  said  he. 

"What   a   boy   you    are!"    she    answered. 


128  THE   NECKLACE 

"Why,  you  don't  need  hardly  any,  at  all. 
Haven't  you  even  got,  say,  two  hundred  pe- 
setas?" 

"Two  hundred  pesetas!"  stammered  En- 
rique, horror-stricken.  "No,  no,  I  haven't." 

"Well,  a  hundred,  then?" 

"No." 

"All  right.  Come,  tell  me.  How  much 
have  you  got?" 

Enrique  would  have  gladly  died.  Gnawing 
his  lips  with  desperation,  he  answered: 

"I've  hardly  got  ten  left." 

She  burst  out  laughing,  one  of  those  frank, 
bold  laughs  such  as  perhaps  she  had  never 
known  since  the  time  when  some  rich  man, 
setting  her  feet  on  the  path  of  sin,  had  taken 
from  her  the  gentle  happiness  of  being  poor. 

"And  you  were  talking  about  going  to  For- 
nos?"  she  demanded. 

Enrique  answered,  in  shame: 

"I'm  not  good  enough  for  you,  Alicia!  I'm 
not  worthy  of  you!  I'll  take  you  home." 

The  girl  answered,  charmed  by  the  bohe- 
mian  novelty  of  the  adventure: 

"Never  mind  about  the  money.  I  want  to 
have  something  to  eat  with  you.  Take  me  to 


THE   NECKLACE  129 


some  tavern  or  other,  some  cheap  little  dive. 
It's  all  right/' 

He  still  hesitated.  She  insisted.  The  ter- 
ror of  falling  from  her  good  graces  enfolded 
him. 

"What  if  the  food  is  bad,  and  you  don't  like 
it?"  he  asked. 

"Fool!  I  don't  want  luxury,  to-night.  I 
want  memories  of  other  times.  Was  I  always 
rich,  do  you  think?" 

"Well,  in  that  case " 

"Yes,  yes,  take  me  along!  Show  me  some- 
thing of  your  life !" 

Arm  in  arm  they  went  down  the  street. 
Their  feet  kept  time,  together.  Feverishly  he 
repeated: 

"Alicia!    Oh,  my  Alicia!" 

Then,  as  he  buried  his  white  and  trembling 
lips  in  the  hair  of  the  greatly  desired  one,  it 
seemed  to  him  that  all  Madrid  was  filled  with 
perfumes  of  fresh  violets. 


Ill 


SOME  days  drifted  by,  after  that  unfor- 
gettable night,  without  Darles  getting 
any  chance  to  see  Alicia.  Several  aft- 
ernoons he  went  to  her  house,  between 
half -past  two  and  three,  at  which  hour  Don 
Manuel  was  never  there.  But  Teodora,  the 
maid,  never  let  him  get  beyond  the  parlor. 
Sometimes  Alicia  was  out,  the  maid  said; 
again,  she  was  asleep  or  had  a  headache,  and 
could  not  see  him.  Teodora  spoke  drily,  dis- 
concertingly. If  there  is  any  way  to  sound 
the  good  or  bad  opinion  any  one  has  of  us,  it 
is  surely  in  the  attitude  of  that  person's  ser- 
vants. The  student  would  murmur: 

"And  she  didn't  leave  any  word  for  me?" 

"No,  sir.    Not  any." 

Then,  at  sight  of  the  maid's  sly  and  mock- 
ing face,  Enrique  would  feel  his  countenance 
lengthen  with  sadness.  His  eyes  would  grow 
dim  with  grief  and  humility,  like  those  of  a 
discharged  servant.  But  then,  not  being  quite 
able  to  give  up  the  illusion  that  had  brought 
him  there,  he  would  say: 

130 


THE   NECKLACE  131 

"Well,  all  right,  if  that's  how  it  is.  Tell  her 
I  called,  and  say  I'll  be  back  to-morrow." 

As  he  went  down  the  stairs,  very  sadly,  that 
idea  of  his  own  inferiority  which  had  wounded 
him  on  the  night  he  had  been  introduced  to 
Alicia  once  more  overcame  him.  Yes,  he  was 
beaten  at  the  start.  He  was  inept  and  worth- 
less. What  could  he  offer  her?  Not  money, 
since  he  was  poor;  nor  fame,  since  he  was  not 
a  noted  artist;  nor  yet  could  he  bring  her 
gayety  and  joy,  for  whatever  of  these  he  had 
until  now  possessed  in  his  sentimental,  intro- 
spective soul,  had  been  taken  away  from  him 
by  Alicia's  indifference. 

Many  days,  at  nightfall,  the  student  went 
to  Calle  Mayor  and  stood  in  front  of  the  jew- 
eler's window  where  he  could  see  the  sparkling 
of  that  magnificent  emerald  necklace  that 
Alicia  had  told  him  about.  Now  he  would 
walk  up  and  down  the  street,  wrapped  in  his 
cloak  with  a  certain  worldly  aplomb;  now  he 
would  pause  to  look  at  the  shop,  whose  elec- 
tric lights  flooded  the  passers-by  under  a  rain 
of  brilliancy.  He  would  stand  a  long  time  in 
front  of  the  window,  enthralled  by  the  spell  of 
the  bleeding  rubies,  the  topazes  which  burned 
like  wounds,  the  celestial  blue  turquoises.  He 


132  THE  NECKLACE 

would  stare  at  the  chains  and  rings,  shimmer- 
ing with  gold  on  the  artistically- wrinkled, 
black  velvet,  which  finely  carpeted  the  broad 
reach  of  the  window.  And  this  vagrant  at- 
traction, wakened  in  him  by  the  jewels,  seemed 
to  cause  a  kind  of  presentiment.  All  the  time, 
his  immature  mind  would  be  thinking: 

"Alicia  would  be  happy  if  she  should  pass 
along,  now,  and  see  me  here." 

During  those  first  days  of  separation,  the 
memory  of  the  beloved  one  rooted  itself  into 
the  student's  memory  under  the  strange  sen- 
sation of  violet  perfume.  He  either  did  not 
remember,  or  he  pretended  not  to  remember, 
the  big,  green  eyes  of  the  girl,  her  cruel  and 
epigrammatic  little  mouth,  her  firm,  white 
body.  But  all  the  more  did  that  violet  per- 
fume possess  him.  He  seemed  to  find  his 
clothes,  his  hands,  his  text-books,  his  poor  little 
bed  all  odorous  of  violets.  Still,  even  this 
sweet  illusion  began  to  fade.  Time  began  to 
blur  it  out,  as  it  had  blurred  his  recollections 
of  the  girl.  Darles  wept  a  great  deal.  And 
one  night  he  wrote  her  a  desperate,  somewhat 
enigmatic  note: 

"I'm  going  to  see  you,  to-morrow.    If  you 


THE  NECKLACE  133 

won't  let  me  in,  I  shall  die.  Be  merciful!  My 
little  room  no  longer  smells  of  violets." 

Alicia  felt  annoyed  by  the  student's  note. 
What  was  the  idea  of  these  ostentatious  hyper- 
boles of  passion?  Could  Darles  have  got  it 
into  his  head  that  what  had  happened — one  of 
many  adventures  in  her  path — had  been  any- 
thing but  perfectly  worthless  and  common? 
Alicia  felt  so  sure  of  this  that  her  emotion  was 
one  of  astonishment,  more  than  of  disgust. 
Yet,  in  the  beginning,  her  surprise  caused  her 
a  certain  pleasure. 

"It  really  would  be  interesting,"  thought 
she,  "if  this  boy  should  fall  in  love  with  me 
like  the  hero  of  a  play." 

But  the  pleasure  of  such  a  curiosity  hardly 
lasted  a  minute.  Soon  the  girl's  cold,  selfish 
spirit,  that  always  traveled  in  straight  lines 
toward  its  own  ends — the  spirit  and  the  will 
that  never  let  themselves  be  interfered  with — 
reacted  against  this  romantic  possibility.  Ali- 
cia neither  wanted  to  love  nor  be  loved.  For 
through  the  experiences  of  her  girl  friends  she 
had  learned  that  love,  with  all  its  jealousies 
and  pains,  is  harshly  cruel  to  lover  and  be- 
loved, alike. 

She  attached  no  importance  whatever  to  the 


134  THE   NECKLACE 

caprice  that  had  momentarily  thrown  her  into 
the  student's  arms.  The  evening  before  their 
first  and  only  night  together,  Darles  had  just 
happened  to  find  her  in  one  of  those  fits  of 
the  blues,  of  eclectic  relaxation,  in  which  the 
volatile  feminine  sense  of  ethics  swings  equi- 
distant from  good  and  evil.  Her  virtues  and 
her  vices,  alike,  were  arbitrary  and  without 
any  exact  motive.  If  the  student  had  perhaps 
had  finer  eyes,  she  would  have  yielded  to  him, 
just  the  same;  then  too,  perhaps  if  the  emerald 
necklace  that,  just  a  few  minutes  before,  she 
and  Don  Manuel  had  been  quarreling  about 
had  been  less  desirable,  she  would  have  refused 
him. 

The  only  certain  thing  about  it  all  was  this, 
that  she  had  accepted  the  student's  comrade- 
ship because  in  a  kind  of  good-natured  way  she 
had  reckoned  the  conversation  of  even  a  poor 
man  more  entertaining  than  the  remembrance 
of  a  necklace.  And  next  morning  when  she 
had  got  back  home,  she  had  found  herself  a  lit- 
tle surprised  at  her  own  conduct.  She  felt  that 
she  had  shown  a  generosity,  a  fanciful  whim 
such  as  perhaps  might  have  driven  a  critic  like 
Sarcey,  after  forty  years  of  the  real  theater,  to 
gome  miserable  little  puppet-show.  At  all 


THE  NECKLACE  135 

events  the  thing  should  never  happen  again. 
It  was  absurd ! 

Next  day,  Teodora  had  informed  her  that 
Darles  had  come  to  see  her  while  she  had  been 
out.  Day  after  day,  the  same  thing  had  oc- 
curred. The  girl  had  ended  up  by  feeling  .very 
much  annoyed  at  the  young  fellow's  sad  obsti- 
nacy. A  veritable  beggar  for  love,  he  had  come 
to  trouble  the  easy  currents  of  her  idleness. 
Every  time  Teodora  had  told  her  the  student 
had  been  back  again,  Alicia  had  grown  angry. 

"What  the  devil  does  he  want,  anyhow?" 
she  would  exclaim.  "Blest  if  I  know!" 

In  this  she  was  really  sincere.  She  did  not 
know.  The  selfish  frivolty  of  her  disposition 
could  not  understand  how  any  man,  after  hav- 
ing received  the  supreme  gift  from  a  woman, 
could  do  other  than  get  tired  of  her.  Darles' 
note,  complaining  of  her  desertion  of  him,  in- 
creased her  annoyance.  Once  for  all  she  felt 
she  must  cut  this  entanglement.  What  better 
way  could  there  be  than  to  receive  the  impor- 
tunate young  fellow  and  talk  to  him  in  a  per- 
fectly impersonal  way,  as  if  no  secret  existed 
between  them? 

When  Darles  arrived,  next  day,  at  the  usual 
time,  Teodora  led  him  into  the  dining-room. 


136  THE  NECKLACE 

"I'll  tell  mistress  you're  here,"  said  she. 

Darles  remained  standing  there,  reflective, 
one  elbow  leaning  against  the  window- jamb. 
Once,  when  he  had  been  nothing  but  "Don 
Manuel's  friend,"  Alicia  had  used  to  receive 
him  informally.  Nobody  had  announced  him, 
then.  Now  he  felt  himself  isolated,  stifled  by 
that  kind  of  friendly  hostility  used  on  bore- 
some  callers.  The  maid  came  back  and  said: 

"Mistress  will  see  you.    Come  this  way." 

Darles  found  the  girl  in  her  little  boudoir, 
together  with  a  tall,  dark-haired  girl,  dressed 
in  gray.  This  girl  wore  English-looking,  man- 
nish clothes,  well  set  off  by  her  red  tie  and  by 
the  whiteness  of  her  starched  collar  and  cuffs. 
When  Alicia  saw  the  student,  she  neither 
moved  nor  stretched  out  her  hand  to  him.  All 
she  said  was: 

"Hello,  there!    Is  that  you?" 

Something  in  the  rather  scornful  familiarity 
of  her  greeting  infinitely  humbled  him.  He 
grew  pale.  All  the  blood  in  his  body  seemed 
flooding  his  heart,  turning  to  ice  there.  Still 
discourteous,  Alicia  introduced  him  to  the 
other  girl: 

"Senor  Darles — my  friend,  Candelas." 

Candelas  fixed  her  keen,  vivid  eyes  on  the 


THE  NECKLACE  137 

newcomer.  Then  she  peered  at  Alicia,  as  if 
asking  whether  this  visit  might  not  perhaps 
veil  some  amorous  secret.  The  girl  under- 
stood, and  gave  her  friend's  sophisticated  ques- 
tion a  vertical  answer: 

"No,  you're  wrong.  Enrique  comes  here 
only  because  he's  Don  Manuel's  friend." 

The  student  nodded  assent  to  this,  and  Can- 
delas  smiled  coldly.  Then  the  two  girls  once 
more  took  up  the  thread  of  the  conversation 
broken  by  the  arrival  of  Darles.  The  poor 
fellow  sensed  that  he  was  isolated  and  dis- 
missed. Five,  ten,  fifteen  minutes  passed, 
with  no  break  in  that  animated  chatter.  Men's 
names  came  into  it;  and  Candelas  laughed 
heartily  as  she  reviewed  the  details  of  a  recent 
supper  she  had  had.  Alicia  laughed,  too. 
Quite  possibly  she  did  this  to  hurt  the  stu- 
dent's feelings  and  to  persuade  herself  En- 
rique really  was  nothing  more  to  her  than  just 
Don  Manuel's  friend. 

A  visitor  dropped  in;  an  old  woman  who 
dealt  in  clothes  and  trinkets.  She  had  a  heavy 
bundle  with  her,  and  this  she  put  down  on  the 
floor.  Alicia  asked  her: 

"Well,  Clotilde,  what's  new?" 


138  THE   NECKLACE 

Clotilde  fairly  oozed  enjoyment,  in  her  thick 
cloak,  as  she  answered: 

"I've  got  the  finest  petticoats  and  stockings 
in  the  world." 

"High-priced?" 

"Dirt  cheap!  I  don't  know  why,  but  I've 
got  it  into  my  head  you  want  to  spend  a  little 
money,  to-day." 

Then  the  furnishings  of  the  little  boudoir 
vanished  under  a  many-colored  flood  of  showy 
silks — green,  brown,  blue — which,  as  they  were 
spread  out,  diffused  a  most  delightful  perfume 
of  cleanness.  As  if  under  some  magic  spell, 
Alicia  and  Candelas  fell  a  prey  to  the  intense, 
acquisitive  passion  that  tortures  women  in 
front  of  shop-windows.  The  two  girls  vied  in 
asking  the  price  of  every  treasure. 

"This  petticoat  here,  how  much?" 

"Seeing  it's  you,  a  hundred  pesetas." 

"And  that  heliotrope  one?" 

"Seventy-five.  Just  take  a  good  look  at  it. 
Wonderful!" 

With  amazement,  Enrique  studied  this  pro- 
fusion of  elegance  and  luxury.  He  had  never 
even  dreamed  civilization  wove  so  many  refine- 
ments about  the  art  of  love.  And  as  his  frank 
eyes  observed  these  petticoats  that  gently  rus- 


THE   NECKLACE  139 

tied,  or  took  in  the  lace  of  these  night-dresses 
— majestically  full  as  senatorial  togas — he 
sadly  recalled  the  poor  little  white  chemises 
and  coarse  underwear  lacking  in  all  adorn- 
ment, that  the  women  of  his  home-town  hung 
out  to  dry  on  their  clothes-lines. 

Now  a  new  detail  came  to  increase  his  mis- 
ery. The  peddler  and  Alicia  were  arguing  ex- 
citedly over  the  price  of  the  heliotrope  petti- 
coat. Clotilde  wanted  seventy-five  pesetas, 
and  the  young  woman  vowed  she  couldn't  go 
over  fifty.  The  peddler  insisted : 

"You'd  better  make  up  your  mind  to  take 
it,  because  you  won't  get  such  a  bargain  any- 
where else.  I'm  only  selling  it  at  this  price 
just  to  please  you,  but  I'm  not  making  a  penny 
on  the  deal." 

Then  she  turned  to  Enrique,  and  added: 

"Come  now,  this  gentleman  will  buy  it  for 
you!" 

Darles  blushed,  and  found  nothing  to  say. 
Men  without  money  are  contemptible;  and  as 
Alicia  did  not  even  deign  to  look  at  him,  the 
student  knew  he  had  lost  her.  Dear  Lord,  if 
there  had  only  been  some  devil's  bank  where 
lovers  might  barter  off  the  years  of  their  life, 
for  money,  gladly  would  he  have  sold  his  whole 


140  THE   NECKLACE 

existence  for  those  cursed  seventy- five  pesetas ! 

Tired  of  arguing,  the  peddler  gathered  up 
her  things  and  packed  them  into  her  valise. 
The  conversation  drifted  off  to  other  things. 
The  women  began  talking  about  jewels.  Can- 
delas  showed  a  brooch  that  had  been  given  her. 
Clotilde  offered  the  girls  a  necklace. 

"If  you'd  like  to  see  it,  I'll  bring  it,"  said 
she.  "I've  got  it  at  home." 

Alicia  sighed  deeply;  and  that  long  sigh, 
broken  like  a  child's,  expressed  enormous 
grief.  She  said: 

"I'm  in  love  with  a  necklace  in  a  shop  on 
Calle  Mayor,  and  I  don't  want  any  other.  I 
dream  about  it  all  the  time.  I  never  saw  any- 
thing so  wonderful!  I  tell  you  the  man  who 
gives  me  that,  can  have  me." 

"How  much  is  it?" 

"Fifteen  thousand  pesetas." 

Then  she  fixed  an  inscrutable  look  on  Darles, 
and  added: 

"I  think  this  gentleman  here  is  going  to  get 
it  for  me.  Aren't  you,  Enrique?" 

Candelas  was  about  to  laugh,  but  checked 
herself.  Her  penetrating  eyes  had  just  seen 
in  the  student's  congested  face  something  of 
the  terrific  inner  struggle  now  possessing  him. 


THE  NECKLACE  141 

Darles  was  no  longer  able  to  contain  himself. 
He  got  up  to  leave,  and  his  eyes  showed  such 
despair  and  shame  that  Alicia  took  pity  on 
him. 

"I'll  see  you  out,"  said  she. 

They  left  the  little  boudoir.  When  they  got 
to  the  parlor,  the  student — who  hardly  knew 
what  he  was  doing — seized  the  girl's  hands  and 
covered  them  with  kisses.  He  began  to  weep 
desperately. 

"Alicia!  Alicia!"  he  stammered,  "what 
makes  you  so  cruel  to  me?  I'm  dying  for  you! 
Alicia!  Oh,  why  can't  you  love  me?" 

But  she  had  already  recovered  from  her 
brief  emotion,  and  now  tried  to  rid  herself  of 
him. 

"Come,  come,  now,"  she  exclaimed,  "what  a 
fool  you  are!" 

"I  adore  you,  Alicia!    Heart  of  my  soul!" 

"Come  now,  be  good!  Keep  quiet — good- 
by!  You're  getting  me  into  trouble!" 

"But  I've  got  to  see  you — see  you!" 

"All  right!  Only  do  keep  quiet!  Good- 
by — keep  quiet,  I  tell  you!  Candelas  might 
get  wise  to  something,  and  I  don't  want  her 
making  fun  of  us  1" 

She  spoke  in  a  low  tone,  and  at  the  same 


142  THE  NECKLACE 

time  kept  pushing  Darles  toward  the  door.  He 
murmured : 

"Are  you  sending  me  away  forever?" 

"No." 

"Yes,  you  are,  too!  You're  trying  to  get 
rid  of  me!" 

"No,  no;  but  for  heaven's  sake,  get  out!" 

"Yes,  you  are;  you're  throwing  me  out — 
getting  rid  of  me  because  I'm  poor,  because  I 
don't  know  how  to  win  you!  But  how  can  I 
win  you,  if  you  won't  give  me  a  little  time?" 

She  was  growing  angry;  her  face  became 
hard.  The  student  clasped  his  hands  and 
cried : 

"You're  doing  a  wicked  thing  to  send  me 
away  like  this!" 

"All  right,  all  right " 

"A  wicked  thing,  because  any  man  that  loves 
as  much  as  I  do  can  do  anything.  Even  if  I 
am  poor,  some  time  I  might  be  rich.  Even  if 
I  am  obscure,  I  might  become  a  noted  artist, 
if  you  wanted  me  to.  I'd  kill,  I'd  steal  for 
you!" 

"For  heaven's  sake,  shut  up  and  get  out!" 

"Yes,  I'll  go  because  you  tell  me  to.  But — 
hero  or  thief — I'd  be  anything  to  stay  with 
you,  anything  for  you!  Alicia,  oh,  my  Alicia, 


THE   NECKLACE  143 

I'll  do  anything  you  want  me  to — yes,  by  God, 
if  I  get  twenty  years  for  it!" 

The  poor,  innocent  young  chap,  without  sus- 
pecting it,  was  uttering  a  great  phrase ;  he  was 
laying  all  his  youth  at  the  feet  of  this  ungrate- 
ful woman — offering  her  the  same  treasure  of 
youth  to  gain  which  Faust  lost  his  soul. 

Alicia  already  had  the  door  open. 

"Good-by,"  she  whispered.  "Do  get  out! 
Manuel  might  come!" 

"When  am  I  going  to  see  you  again?" 

"Oh,  some  time." 

"When?" 

"I  don't  know.    Won't  you  go?" 

"To-morrow?" 

"No." 

"Tell  me!  Tell  me  what  day!  I'll  be  pa- 
tient. I'll  wait.  When  can  I  see  you?" 

She  hesitated.    Ardently  he  insisted: 

"When?" 

"Oh,  you  make  me  sick!" 

"Come,  have  it  over  with.    Tell  me,  when?" 

A  look  of  perdition,  of  madness,  gleamed  iri 
the  green  eyes  of  the  Magdalene.  This  look 
seemed  to  illuminate  her  whole  face,  to  change 
into  a  smile  on  the  tyrannical  line  of  her  lips. 

"When?"  he  repeated. 


144  THE   NECKLACE 

Without  knowing  why,  the  student  was 
afraid;  but  almost  at  once  he  gathered  him- 
self together. 

"Tell  me,  tell  me,  when?"  he  stammered. 

"I  don't  know." 

"You've  got  to  tell  mel" 

"You're  crazy!" 

"No  matter,  tell  me,  when?" 

Insidiously  she  replied: 

"Never.  Or — when  you  bring  me  the  neck- 
lace I  asked  you  for!" 

Struck  dumb,  he  peered  at  her,  because  he 
realized  the  girl  meant  what  she  said.  She 
added: 

"Then " 

The  door  closed.  Enrique  Darles  blun- 
dered, weeping,  down  the  staircase. 


IV 


DARLES  got  up  next  morning  very 
early  and  went  wandering  out  into 
the    street.      He    was    completely 
done  up.    The  night  had  been  one 
of  terror  and  insomnia;  and  when  day  had 
dawned,  finding  him  in  his  miserable  little 
room — a  room  whose  only  furniture  was  a  bu- 
reau covered  with  books  and  magazines,   a 
rickety  pine  table  and  a  few  rush-bottomed 
chairs,  all  mean  and  old — the  realization  of 
his  solitude  had  struck  him  with  the  violence 
of  a  blow.    He  had  felt  that  profound  agita- 
tion which  psychologists  call  "claustrophobia," 
or  the  fear  of  enclosed  spaces. 

For  a  long  time  he  wandered  about,  ab- 
sorbed in  vacillations  that  had  neither  name  nor 
plan.  He  hardly  knew  himself.  His  con- 
science had  been  cruelly  wrung  in  a  few  hours 
of  suffering;  and  from  this  savage  convulsion 
of  the  soul  unsuspected  developments  were 
emerging,  enormous  moral  unfoldings,  filled 
with  terrifying  perplexities.  His  despair  hacl 

145 


146  THE  NECKLACE 

loosed  a  stupendous  avalanche  of  problems 
against  the  bulwark  of  those  moral  principles 
which  had  been  taught  him  as  a  child.  And 
each  of  these  questions  was  now  a  terrible  prob- 
lem for  him.  Where,  he  wondered,  does  vir- 
tue end?  Where  does  sin  commence?  And  if 
all  our  natural  forces  should  go  straight  to- 
ward the  goal  of  happiness,  why  should  there 
be  any  desires  that  codes  of  formulated  ethics 
should  judge  depraved  and  sinful?  Why 
should  not  everything  which  pleases  be  al- 
lowed? 

When  he  reached  the  Calle  de  Atocha,  he 
met  a  friend  of  his,  called  Pascual  Canamares. 
This  friend  was  a  medical  student  like  him- 
self. The  two  young  fellows  greeted  each 
other.  Canamares  was  on  his  way  to  San 
Carlos. 

"Do  you  want  to  come  along  with  me?"  he 
asked.  "I'll  show  you  the  dissecting-room." 

Darles  went  along  with  his  friend.  Cana- 
mares noticed  Enrique's  pallor. 

"You  don't  look  a  bit  well  this  morning," 
said  he. 

"No,  I  didn't  sleep  much  last  night." 

"Maybe  you  were  out  having  a  good  time?" 

"No.    On  the  contrary,  I  cried  all  night." 


THE  NECKLACE  147 

There  was  such  a  depth  of  manly  pain  in 
this  reply  that  Canamares  did  not  dare  probe 
the  matter  any  further. 

The  dissecting-room,  cold  and  white,  pro- 
duced some  very  lively  sensations  in  Darles. 
Floods  of  sunlight  fell  from  the  tall  windows, 
painting  a  wide,  golden  border  over  the  tiled 
walls.  A  good  many  corpses  lay  on  the  marble 
tables,  covered  with  blood-stained  sheets;  and 
all  these  bodies  had  shaven  heads  and  open 
mouths.  Their  naked  feet,  closely  joined  to- 
gether, produced  a  ghastly  sensation  of 
quietude.  An  indefinable  odor  floated  in  the 
air,  a  nauseating  odor  of  dead  flesh.  Darles 
felt  a  slight  vertigo  which  forced  him  to  close 
his  eyes  and  leave  the  room.  For  more  than 
an  hour  he  wandered  about  the  gravely-echo- 
ing, spacious  cloisters  of  San  Carlos.  A 
strange  sadness  hovered  over  the  building; 
the  damp,  old  building  which  once  on  a  time 
had  been  a  convent  and  now  had  become  a 
school — the  building  where  the  vast  tedium  of 
a  science  unable  to  free  life  from  pain  was 
added  to  the  profound  melancholy  of  a  re- 
ligion which  thinks  only  of  death. 

When  Pascual  Canamares  left  his  class- 
room, he  asked  Darles  to  go  and  dine  with 


148  THE  NECKLACE 

him.  Enrique  accepted.  It  was  just  noon. 
Canamares  usually  ate  at  a  little  tavern  in  the 
Plaza  de  Anton  Martin.  This  was  a  gay  little 
establishment,  with  high  wooden  counters, 
painted  red.  The  two  students  sat  down  be- 
fore a  table,  on  which  the  hostess  had  spread 
a  little  tablecloth. 

"Well,  what  do  you  want?"  asked  Cana- 
mares. 

"Oh,  I  don't  care.    Anything  you  do." 

"Soup  and  stew?" 

"All  right." 

Canamares  ordered,  in  a  free  and  easy  way: 

"Landlady!    Bring  us  a  stewl" 

He  was  a  big,  young  fellow,  twenty,  plump 
and  full-blooded,  vivacious  with  that  healthy, 
turbulent  kind  of  joviality  which  seems  to  dif- 
fuse vital  energies  all  about  it.  He  was  very 
talkative ;  and  in  his  picturesque  and  frivolous 
chatter  lay  a  contagious  good-humor.  Darles 
answered  him  only  with  distrait  monosyllables. 
His  whole  attention  was  fixed  on  a  few  coach- 
men at  the  next  table.  They  were  talking 
about  a  certain  crime  that  had  been  committed 
that  morning.  Two  men,  in  love  with  the  same 
woman,  had  fought  for  her  with  knives,  and 
one  had  killed  the  other.  The  murderer  had 


THE  NECKLACE  149 

been  captured.  It  was  a  vulgar  but  intense 
crime  of  passion;  it  seemed  to  have  a  certain 
barbarous  charm  which,  in  its  own  way,  was 
chivalric,  since  there  had  been  no  foul  play  in 
the  crime.  The  fight  had  been  fair  and  open. 
And  the  student  admired,  he  even  envied  those 
two  brave  men  who,  for  the  sake  of  love,  had 
not  shrunk  before  the  solemnity  of  a  moment 
in  which  the  death-dealing  wound  coincides 
with  the  knife-thrust  which  carries  a  man  off 
to  the  penitentiary. 

As  they  left  the  tavern,  Pascual  took  un- 
ceremonious leave  of  his  companion. 

"I'm  going  to  leave  you,"  said  he,  "because 
no  one  can  have  any  fun  with  you.  Hanged 
if  I  know  what's  the  matter  with  you,  to-day ! 
Why,  you  won't  even  listen  to  a  fellow!" 

Then  he  took  his  leave.  Unmoved,  Enrique 
saw  him  walk  away;  but  after  that  he  felt  a 
painful  sensation  of  loneliness.  Yes,  and  this 
loneliness  had  come  upon  him  because  he  had 
been  frank  enough  not  to  hide  his  ugly  state 
of  mind,  because  he  had  let  all  the  melancholy 
of  his  soul  shine  forth  freely  from  his  eyes. 
And  in  that  moment  he  understood  that  to  be 
thoroughly  sincere  is  tremendously  expensive, 


150  THE  NECKLACE 

for  all  sincerity — even  the  most  innocent — in- 
variably exacts  a  heavy  price. 

That  evening  he  ate  only  a  very  light  sup- 
per and  went  to  bed  early.  He  lay  awake  a 
long  time,  tortured  by  a  flood  of  disconnected 
memories.  His  father,  who  represented  all  his 
past,  and  Alicia  Pardo,  who  symbolized  his 
whole  present,  seemed  to  be  striving  for  him. 
The  image  of  the  girl  at  last  prevailed. 

Little  by  little  he  fell  to  studying  the  per- 
verse and  mocking  spirit  of  the  woman,  who, 
even  when  she  had  waked  up  in  the  morning 
with  him,  had  looked  at  him  and  shrugged  her 
shoulders  disdainfully.  Well,  what  had  hap- 
pened? Between  them,  where  had  the  fault 
lain?  Was  the  girl  naturally  a  hard-hearted 
creature,  incapable  of  high  and  lasting  senti- 
ments; or  was  it  that  he,  himself,  quiet  and 
peaceful,  had  not  been  able  to  live  up  to  her 
illusions? 

Scourged  by  the  agonizing  tyranny  of  his 
will,  the  student's  memory  recalled  moments, 
evoked  phrases,  and  once  more  endowed  with 
new  reality  all  the  details  of  that  enchanted 
night  in  which  it  had  seemed  to  him  all  Madrid 
had  been  perfumed  with  violets.  And  as  the 
human  heart  always  yearns  to  forgive  the  ob- 


THE  NECKLACE  151 

ject  of  our  love,  Enrique  succeeded  at  last, 
after  much  reflection,  in  convincing  himself 
that  Alicia  was  innocent. 

He  decided  that  from  the  first  moment  she 
had  been  blameless.  She  had  encouraged  him 
to  undertake  the  conquest  of  her;  and  after- 
ward completely  and  with  no  other  wish  than 
to  see  him  happy  she  had  opened  her  arms  to 
him — Venus-like  arms,  which  had  cast  about 
his  neck  a  bond  of  pity  and  sweet  tenderness. 
And  he,  in  exchange  for  such  supreme  happi- 
ness, what  had  he  given? 

Accusingly  an  implacable  voice  began  to 
cry  out  in  the  student's  conscience.  Alicia,  he 
pondered,  was  accustomed  to  the  ways  of  the 
world ;  she  was  a  woman  of  exacting  and  re- 
fined tastes,  who  adored  luxury  and  under- 
stood Beethoven.  Many  men  of  the  aristoc- 
racy worshiped  her,  making  a  fashionable 
cult  of  her  beauty;  and  more  than  one  famous 
tenor  had  sung  for  her,  alone  in  the  intimacy 
of  her  bedroom,  his  favorite  racconto.  The  in- 
exorable voice  continued: 

"And  what  have  you  done,  Darles  the  Ob- 
scure, to  be  worthy  of  this  treasure?  What 
merits  have  you  had?  Women  of  such  com- 
plete beauty  as  hers  seek  that  which  excels — 


152  THE  NECKLACE 

they  love  strength,  which  is  the  supreme  beauty 
of  man;  strength,  which  is  glory  in  the  artist, 
money  in  the  millionaire,  elegance  and  breed- 
ing in  the  man  of  the  world,  despair  in  the 
suicide,  courage  and  outlawry  in  the  thief  who 
boldly  dares  defy  the  law.  But  you,  you  who 
are  nothing,  what  do  you  aspire  to?  Of  what 
can  you  complain?" 

The  student  heaved  a  sigh,  and  his  eyes 
filled  with  tears.  He  was  a  fool,  a  shrinking 
coward,  a  poltroon.  A  man  who  has  ruined 
himself  for  a  woman,  or  who,  to  keep  her  as 
his  own,  has  committed  murder  and  been  sent 
to  prison,  may  justly  complain  of  her.  But 
hef  quite  on  the  contrary 

Suddenly  Darles  shuddered  so  violently 
that  the  electric  shock  of  his  nerves  made  him 
utter  a  cry.  Deathly  pale,  he  sat  up  in  bed. 
Since  he  could  not  give  Alicia  either  a  for- 
tune or  the  glory  of  a  great  artist,  he  must 
drink  a  toast  to  her  with  his  whole  honor — 
he  must  steal.  This  came  to  him  as  a  terrible 
revelation,  resonant  of  Hell.  And  all  at  once 
he  understood  the  enigmatic  expression  which 
had  shone  in  the  eyes  of  the  girl  and  had 
sounded  from  her  lips  the  last  time  they  had 
talked  together.  He  had  asked  her:  "When 


THE   NECKLACE  153 

am  I  going  to  see  you  again?"  And  she  had 
answered:  "Never — until  you  bring  me  the 
necklace  I  have  asked  you  for!" 

Now  these  mystic  words  clearly  reechoed 
in  his  mind;  now  he  fully  understood  them. 
Alicia  was  in  love  with  a  priceless  jewel;  and 
often,  thinking  about  it,  she  grew  very  sad. 
Her  sadness  was  real;  he  himself  had  seen  it. 
Perhaps  the  girl,  when  she  had  dismissed  him, 
reminding  him  of  that  necklace,  had  spoken  in 
jest;  perhaps  it  had  been  in  earnest.  Who 
could  tell?  At  all  events,  when  she  had  de- 
clared that  they  would  never  see  each  other 
again,  she  had  in  a  veiled  manner  expressed 
her  belief  that  he  was  a  coward,  incapable  of 
ruining  himself  for  her. 

The  feverish  eyes  of  Enrique  Darles  burned 
like  coals.  Why,  indeed,  should  he  not  steal? 
Why  should  he  not  prove  himself  brave,  ca- 
pable of  everything?  At  the  basis  of  every 
great  sacrifice  lies  something  superhuman,  that 
confuses  and  that  rends  the  soul.  If  he  were 
a  thief  and  could  pay  with  his  bravery  some- 
thing that  his  small,  poor  money  could  not 
buy ;  if  he  should  ruin  his  whole  career  just  to 
please  her,  should  bring  down  upon  his  head 
the  rigors  of  the  law  and  his  father's  curses, 


154  THE  NECKLACE 

Alicia — so  he  fondly  believed — would  love  him 
blindly,  with  the  same  sort  of  frenzy  that  Bal- 
zac's hero,  Vautrin,  inspired  in  women. 

The  voice  which  until  now  had  been  thun- 
dering accusations  in  the  student's  storm- 
tossed  conscience,  now  with  soft  flatterings  be- 
gan to  wheedle  and  cajole  him,  saying: 

"Alicia,  your  beloved  Alicia  would  be  happy 
with  the  emeralds  of  that  necklace.  If  you 
have  no  way  to  buy  it  for  her,  go  steal  it! 
You're  a  cowardly  wretch  if  you  don't!  What 
does  the  opinion  of  the  crowd  matter  to  you, 
egoist  that  you  are?  A  man  incapable  of  be- 
coming a  thief  for  a  woman  may  love  her 
greatly,  but  he  does  not  love  her  to  distraction. 
What  your  Alicia  desires,  you  should  give  her. 
Have  no  longer  any  doubts,  but  go  and  steal! 
Steal  this  necklace  for  her  and  then  clasp  it 
about  her  neck — that  neck  whose  snow  so  many 
times  in  the  space  of  one  night  offered  its  re- 
freshing coolness  to  your  lips!" 

These  ideas  combined  to  strengthen  his  more 
recent  impressions — the  impression  of  his  visit 
to  the  dissecting-room  where  once  more  he  had 
seen  that  nothing  matters ;  and  the  impression 
of  that  crime  of  jealousy  which  he  had  heard 
talked  about  in  the  tavern.  And  all  at  once, 


THE  NECKLACE  155 

Enrique  Darles  felt  himself  calmed.  His  fu- 
ture had  just  been  decided.  He  would  steal. 
Fatality,  incarnate  in  the  body  of  Alicia 
Pardo,  had  just  mapped  out  his  road  for  him. 

Every  evening  at  sunset,  at  that  hour  of 
mystery  when  the  street-lights  begin  to  shine 
and  women  to  seem  more  beautiful,  the  stu- 
dent left  his  lodgings  and,  passing  through  the 
Calle  Romanos  and  the  Calle  Carmen,  took  his 
way  toward  the  Puerta  del  Sol,  always  full 
of  an  idle,  loitering  crowd  which  seems  to  have 
nowhere  to  go.  He  always  stopped  in  Calle 
Mayor,  to  cast  an  eager,  timorous  look  into 
the  jeweler's  shop,  whose  show-window  glowed 
like  a  bed  of  living  coals. 

This  calculating,  daily  contemplation  of 
those  treasures  completely  overturned  En- 
rique's moral  standards.  He,  himself,  did  not 
grasp  the  profound  change  coming  upon  him. 
Steadily  this  thought  of  stealing  kept  grow- 
ing in  his  soul,  obsessing  him,  evolving  into  a 
resistless,  overwhelming  determination. 

As  if  to  increase  his  torment,  the  emerald 
necklace  which  served  as  an  advertisement  for 
the  shop,  found  no  purchaser.  It  was  far  too 
dear. 


156  THE   NECKLACE 

With  his  nose  pressed  against  the  plate  glass 
of  the  window,  Enrique  suffered  long  mo- 
ments of  anguish,  unable  to  take  his  eyes  from 
that  abyss,  that  precipice  of  gold  and  velvet  at 
the  bottom  of  which  the  diamonds,  topazes, 
emeralds,  pearls,  rubies  and  amethysts  seemed 
the  eyes  of  a  strange  multitude  peering  out  at 
him.  All  this  time  his  imagination  was  de- 
veloping a  mad,  adventurous  tale.  With  his 
prize  hidden  in  his  most  secret  pocket,  he  would 
go  to  see  Alicia  and  would  say  to  her:  "Here, 
take  it!  Here  is  your  necklace,  the  necklace 
that  neither  Don  Manuel  nor  any  of  your  mil- 
lionaire aristocrats  would  buy  for  you.  I, 
gambling  my  life,  have  got  it  for  you !  What 
do  you  say  now?" 

And  thinking  thus,  he  would  close  his  eyes, 
seeming  to  feel  that  all  about  him  the  air  was 
perfumed  with  violets.  And  then  when  he 
once  more  opened  his  eyes,  the  emeralds  of  the 
necklace,  green  and  hard  as  Alicia's  pupils, 
seemed  to  say  to  him:  "All  your  dreams  and 
hopes,  all  your  sweet  visionings,  shall  now 
come  true!"  It  was  the  secret  voice  of  tempta- 
tion, a  voice  which  had  transformed  itself  to 
radiance. 

One  night,  as  he  was  recovering  from  one 


THE  NECKLACE  157 

of  these  long,  deep  fits  of  abstraction,  before 
the  jeweler's  window,  he  saw  that  Alicia 
Pardo  and  her  friend  Candelas  were  really 
drawing  near.  They,  too,  had  seen  him.  Up- 
set, almost  speechless,  the  student  saluted 
them.  Alicia  affectionately  pressed  his  hand; 
and  now  more  strongly  than  ever  he  breathed 
that  violet  odor  which  had  perfumed  all  his 
dreams  of  theft.  The  girl  asked : 

"Well,  what  are  you  doing  here?" 

"Nothing  much,  only  passing  a  little  time." 

Alicia  inspected  the  shop  window. 

"Ah,  yes,  yes,  you  were  looking  at  my  neck- 
lace, weren't  you?" 

"Yes,'  that's  just  what  I  was  doing." 

And  as  he  said  this,  he  blushed  deeply,  be- 
cause this  confession  was  equivalent  to  an- 
other, that  he  was  drawing  closer  to  her. 
Smilingly  Candelas  peered  at  the  student. 
Alicia  added  with  cruel  malice: 

"You  know,  dear,  I  asked  him  to  get  it  for 
me." 

"Yes,  I  know,  I  remember,"  said  Enrique. 

He  spoke  sadly.    Alicia  began  to  laugh. 

"Well,  how  about  it?    Are  you  really  think- 
ing of  giving  it  to  me?" 
saber 


158  THE   NECKLACE 

Sudden  anger  had  endowed  his  face  with 
virile  and  aggressive  tension.  Forehead  and 
lips  grew  pale.  Candelas,  good-natured  in  a 
careless  way,  tried  to  salve  his  misery. 

"You'd  better  leave  us  women  alone,"  said 
she.  "We're  a  bad  lot.  Believe  me,  the  best 
of  us,  the  most  saintly  of  us,  isn't  worth  any 
man's  sacrificing  himself  for." 

Alicia  interrupted  her  friend,  exclaiming: 

"What  a  little  fool  you  are,  to  be  sure!  We 
were  only  joking.  Do  you  think  Enrique 
would  really  do  any  such  crazy  thing  for  me? 
What  nonsense!" 

Proudly  the  student  repeated: 

"iQuien  sabe?" 

Then,  after  a  little  silence,  he  added: 

"I  don't  know  what  makes  you  talk  that 
way.  You've  never  proved  me.  You  don't 
know  what  kind  of  a  man  I  am!" 

Two  months  earlier,  the  laughing,  mocking 
words  of  these  girls  would  have  disconcerted 
him.  But  now  he  felt  himself  transfigured; 
he  felt  new,  vigorous  ardors  in  his  blood.  He 
no  longer  doubted.  An  extraordinary  domi- 
nating concept  of  his  own  person  had  taken 
possession  of  him ;  and  this  concept  of  his  youth 
and  boldness,  of  his  strength  and  courage,  had 


THE  NECKLACE  159 

exalted  him  like  strong  drink.     In  a  single 
moment  the  youth  had  grown  to  be  a  man. 

Alicia  closely  observed  him.  Her  mouth 
grew  serious,  and  under  the  parting  of  her  hair, 
that  lay  symmetrically  on  her  forehead,  her 
eyes  became  pensive.  She  knew  little  of  primi- 
tive man's  hunting-ways,  but  was  expert  in 
judging  characters  and  stirring  up  passions. 
And  though  she  did  indeed  care  little  for 
books,  men's  consciences  lay  open  to  her  eyes ; 
which  kind  of  reading  is  far  better.  Her  keen 
instincts,  rarely  amiss,  perceived  something 
dominant,  something  desperate  in  the  student's 
voice  and  gestures.  She  judged  it  wise  to  end 
the  conversation. 

"So  long,  Enrique.    By  the  way,  Manuel's 
been  asking  for  you,  a  number  of  times." 
"Thanks.     Give  him  my  best  regards." 
"When  are  you  coming  to  see  me?" 
Still  shrouded  in  gloom,  Darles  answered: 
"I  don't  know,  Alicia.    But  you  can  be  sure 
I'll  come  as  soon  as  I  have  the  right  to." 

In  this  allusion  to  what  he  now  called  his 
duty,  trembled  indefinable  bitterness  and 
pride. 

When  the  student  found  himself  alone,  rage 
seized  him — rage  that,  unable  to  express  itself 


160  THE   NECKLACE 

in  words,  found  vent  in  tears.  He  felt  con- 
vinced that  his  answers,  somewhat  mysterious, 
had  duly  impressed  the  girl.  Yes,  they  had 
been  good.  Now  his  conduct  must  back  up  his 
words,  or  he  would  lose  all  his  gains.  Boast- 
ingly  he  had  pledged  himself  to  something  very 
serious.  Nothing  but  ridicule  could  fall  on 
him,  if  he  failed  to  make  good  his  offer.  This 
meant  he  must  go  through,  to  the  bitter  end. 

"Yes,  I  will  become  a  thief,"  he  pondered. 

Calmer  now,  he  took  his  way  to  his  tavern, 
where  he  ate  a  peaceful  supper,  and  went  home 
and  early  to  bed.  He  slept  well,  with  that 
peace  which  irrevocable  decisions  produce  in 
minds  long  racked  by  stress  and  storm.  It  was 
noon  when  he  awoke.  He  got  up  at  once,  put 
on  clean  clothes  and  wrote  his  father  a  quiet 
letter  that  contained  nothing  except  his 
studies.  Then  he  tied  up  all  his  books  and 
went  down  to  the  street  with  them  enveloped 
in  a  big  kerchief. 

"They've  all  got  to  be  sold,"  thought  he. 
"If  I'm  caught,  I'll  need  money.  If  I  get 
away  and  nothing  is  ever  found  out  about  me, 
I  can  get  them  back,  some  time." 

After  having  disposed  of  the  books,  he  went 
to  a  fashionable  restaurant  and  had  rather  a 


THE   NECKLACE  161 


fine  dinner.  In  all  these  little  details,  so  dif- 
ferent from  the  order  and  simplicity  of  his 
usual  life,  you  could  have  seen  a  certain  sad- 
ness of  farewell.  After  dinner,  he  went  to 
drink  coffee  on  the  terrace  of  the  Lion  d'Or, 
and  stayed  a  while  there,  observing  the  women. 
Many,  he  saw,  were  beautiful.  As  yet  he  had 
decided  nothing  definite  about  what  he  meant 
to  do.  He  preferred  to  let  things  take  their 
own,  impromptu  course.  Sometimes  great 
battles  are  best  decided  off-hand,  on  the  march, 
in  the  imminent  presence  of  danger. 

At  exactly  six  o'clock  he  got  up,  crossed  the 
Calle  de  Sevilla  and  went  through  the  Carrera 
de  San  Jeronimo  toward  the  Puerta  del  Sol. 
The  street-lamps  and  the  lights  in  the  shops 
had  not  yet  begun  to  burn.  It  was  an  April 
evening;  a  cool,  fresh,  damp  breeze  wafted 
through  the  streets.  Par  to  the  west,  shining 
in  rosy  space,  Venus  was  shedding  her  eternal 
beams.  Darles  went  peacefully  along,  his  calm 
movements  in  harmony  with  the  perfect  equa- 
nimity that  had  taken  possession  of  him.  When 
he  reached  the  Ministerio  de  la  Gobernacion, 
he  stopped  a  while  to  watch  the  street-cars,  the 
carriages,  the  crowds  circulating  about  him. 
Then  the  idea  that,  before  long,  these  people 


162  THE  NECKLACE 

would  catch  him,  rose  in  his  mind  once  more. 

"To-morrow,"  thought  he,  "I'll  be  seeing 
nothing  of  all  this." 

In  his  eyes  gleamed  the  sadness  of  a  last 
farewell.  It  seemed  to  him  he  had  gone  too 
far,  now,  to  change  his  resolution  of  stealing. 

A  romantic  desire,  almost  a  dandified  pride, 
that  drove  him  to  make  good  with  the  girl, 
formed  the  basis  of  his  madness,  rather  than 
any  carnal  desire.  This  desire,  which  had  at 
first  possessed  him,  had  now  evolved  into  a  re- 
fined and  purely  artistic  sentiment,  a  wish  to 
accomplish  some  heroic  deed.  At  last  analysis, 
merely  to  get  possession  of  Alicia  had  become 
unimportant.  The  most  vital  factor,  practi- 
cally the  only  one  now,  was  to  assume  in  her 
opinion  a  splendid  heroism.  Darles  wanted  to 
show  this  kind  of  heroism,  which  the  adventur- 
ous soul  of  woman  always  admires.  He  was 
finding  himself  on  a  par  with  great  criminals, 
with  illustrious  artists,  with  multimillionaires 
who  wreck  their  fortunes  in  a  single  night,  with 
every  man  who  steps  outside  the  common, 
beaten  paths.  And  the  poor  student,  reflect- 
ing how  the  girl  would  always  remember  that 
nn  honorable  man  had  gone  to  jail  for  love 


THE   NECKLACE  163 

of  her,  thought  himself  both  happy  and  well- 
paid. 

Absorbed  in  these  chimerical  fancies,  En- 
rique Darles  came  to  the  jeweler's  shop  in 
Calle  Mayor.  Its  lights  had  just  been  turned 
on,  and  now  they  flung  bright  radiance  across 
the  sidewalk.  The  boy  stopped  in  front  of  the 
window,  which  was  filled  with  blinding  splen- 
dor. There,  in  the  middle  of  the  display,  was 
the  terrible  necklace  of  emeralds.  It  was  hung 
about  a  half -bust  of  white  velvet.  Darles 
studied  it  a  long  time,  and  at  first  felt  that 
mingled  chill  and  fear  which  the  sight  of  fire- 
arms will  sometimes  produce  in  us.  But  soon 
this  sensation  faded.  The  green  light  of  the 
emeralds  exalted  him.  It  seemed  to  exercise  a 
kind  of  magnetic  attraction,  resistless  as  the 
force  of  gravitation.  Nevertheless,  the  boy 
still  hesitated.  He  still  understood  that  in  this 
little  space  between  him  and  the  shop-window 
a  great  abyss  was  yawning.  But  suddenly  he 
thought : 

"Suppose  Alicia  should  see  me  here,  now?" 

This  idea  overthrew  his  last  fears.    With  a 

sure   hand  he   opened   the   shop   door.     He 

walked  up  to  the  counter.    His  step  was  easy 

and    self-possessed.      A    tall,    finely-dressed 


164  THE  NECKLACE 

clerk,  with  large  red  mustaches,  advanced  to 
meet  him. 

"What  can  I  show  you,  sir?"  asked  the  clerk. 

With  an  aplomb  that  just  a  moment  before 
would  have  seemed  impossible  to  him,  Enrique 
answered: 

"I'd  like  to  see  that  emerald  necklace  in  the 
window." 

"Yes,  sir." 

Darles  glanced  about  him.  He  noted  that 
a  white-bearded  old  gentleman — doubtless  the 
proprietor — was  closely  observing  him  from 
the  rear  of  the  shop.  Already  the  student  had 
made  up  his  plan  of  attack.  He  would  snatch 
the  jewels  and  break  for  the  door.  He  had 
left  this  door  ajar,  on  purpose. 

The  clerk  came  back  with  the  necklace, 
which  he  laid  on  the  moss-green  cloth  that  cov- 
ered the  show-case.  Enrique  hardly  dared 
touch  it. 

"How  much?"  asked  he. 

"Fifteen  thousand  pesetas." 

The  student  clacked  his  tongue,  like  a 
drinker  savoring  the  state  and  quality  of  good 
wine.  The  clerk  added: 

"I'm  sure  you've  seen  very  few  emeralds  like 
these." 


THE  NECKLACE  165 

x 

The  white-bearded  old  gentleman  had  now 
come  nearer.  Saying  nothing,  he  slid  his  hands 
into  his  trouser  pockets.  His  face  looked  grave 
and  puzzled.  You  would  have  thought  his 
merchant  soul  had  scented  danger.  Darles 
gave  him  a  glance.  It  was  not  yet  too  late. 
He  still  was  honest.  There  was  still  time  for 
repentance. 

The  clerk  set  out  a  number  of  trays,  and 
from  these  took  various  necklaces.  His  way 
of  handling  them,  of  caressing  them  with  care- 
ful fingers,  of  spreading  them  out  on  the  cloth, 
all  showed  his  love  of  jewels.  There  were  dia- 
mond, turquoise,  sapphire,  topaz  necklaces. 

The  student  hesitated.  A  dizzying  pleas- 
ure, bitter-sweet,  enveloped  this  nearness  to 
crime.  He  kept  asking: 

"What's  this  one  worth?    And  this?" 

"This  is  very  cheap.  Two  thousand  pesetas." 

"How  about  this  ruby  one?" 

"Forty-five  hundred." 

Darles  took  them  up,  studied  them  care- 
fully, put  them  down  again.  Suddenly  he  felt 
his  cheeks  were  growing  very  pale.  To  give 
himself  countenance  he  commented: 

"This  black  pearl  one  is  very  beautiful," 


166  THE   NECKLACE 

"Yes,  and  it's  more  expensive,  too.  Ten 
thousand  pesetas." 

Suddenly  the  old  gentleman,  who  till  then 
had  uttered  no  word,  exclaimed  brusquely: 

"Now  then,  I  think  you've  talked  enough!" 

He  turned  to  the  clerk. 

"Look  out  for  these  trays/'  he  ordered. 

Darles  raised  his  head,  and  proudly  looked 
the  old  man  in  the  eyes,  with  the  hauteur  of 
one  still  innocent. 

"What  are  you  interfering  for?"  he  de- 
manded. "What's  the  idea?" 

"We  can't  waste  any  more  time  on  you," 
answered  the  jeweler.  "If  I'm  not  mistaken, 
you're  not  overburdened  with  money." 

He  turned  to  his  clerk  again.  The  clerk 
stared  in  amaze.  Imperatively  the  old  man 
ordered : 

"I  tell  you  to  put  these  trays  away!" 

The  student  had  not  yet,  perhaps,  fully  de- 
cided to  steal.  Perhaps  something  good  and 
sound  still  lay  in  his  conscience,  that  might 
have  barred  him  from  fatal  temptation  at  the 
crucial  moment.  But  the  merchant's  provok- 
ing words  spurred  him  on  and  made  him  sin. 
A  spirit  of  revenge  drove  him  to  it.  This  is 
no  novelty.  How  many  times  is  crime  nothing 


THE   NECKLACE  167 


more  than  the  logical  reaction  against  injus- 
tice! 

Beside  himself,  Enrique  stretched  out  his 
hand  toward  the  place  where  lay  the  emerald 
necklace.  His  fingers  clutched  convulsively. 
He  turned,  and  with  one  leap  reached  the  door. 

At  that  second,  two  shots  crackled. 

Darles  flung  himself  into  mad,  headlong 
flight  toward  the  Viaducto.  At  first  he  heard 
a  voice  behind  him,  screaming: 

"Stop  him!    Stop  the  thief!    Stop  thief!" 

It  was  a  horrible,  nightmare  voice.  Then 
came  the  thunderous  tumult  of  the  pursuing 
mob.  Before  him,  the  pedestrians  opened  out. 
He  saw  astonishment  and  fear  in  their  faces. 
As  he  rushed  into  the  Calle  de  Bordadores,  a 
man  brandished  a  stick  and  tried  to  stop  him. 
Darles  veered  to  the  left,  and  ran  up  the  grade 
of  the  Calle  Siete  de  Julio  with  the  speed  of  a 
hare. 

Some  one  threw  a  chair  at  him,  from  a  door- 
way. It  hardly  grazed  kim,  but  tripped  up 
his  nearest  pursuers.  When  the  human  hunt- 
ing-pack, raging  and  giving  tongue,  rushed  in 
under  the  archways  of  the  Plaza  Mayor,  its 
menacing  tumult  echoed  louder  than  ever: 

"Thief,  thief!   Stop  thief!" 


168  THE   NECKLACE 

Beside  himself  with  terror,  the  student  flung 
himself  along.  He  kept  straight  ahead, 
reached  the  park  railing  and  leaped  it  with 
one  bound.  This  saved  him.  The  dim  light 
and  the  shadows  under  the  trees  masked  his 
figure.  Still,  he  kept  on  running  till  he  came 
to  the  fence  again,  and  once  more  jumped  it. 

This  time  as  he  landed,  his  knees  could  no 
longer  hold  him  up.  They  doubled,  and  he 
almost  fell  on  his  face.  But  he  struggled  up, 
once  more,  and  still  ran  on  and  on.  Now  the 
pursuers'  voices  sounded  far-off,  under  the 
echoing  archways  of  the  Plaza. 

Darles  kept  fleeing  down  the  Calle  Toledo. 
He  noticed  that  a  good  many  women  were 
looking  at  him  with  uneasiness.  One  woman 
cried: 

"He's  wounded!" 

When  he  reached  the  Puerta  Cerrada,  the 
student  drew  near  the  famous  cross  that  gives 
its  name  to  the  square.  He  could  do  no  more. 
His  legs  were  collapsing  with  exhaustion,  his 
heart  was  bursting,  his  tongue  protruding.  A 
number  of  women,  frightened,  crowded  about 
him. 

"You're      wounded!"      they      exclaimed. 
"What's  the  matter?    They've  shot  you!" 


THE   NECKLACE  169 


There  was  no  anger  in  their  cries,  but  only 
simple  pity.  The  student  felt  calmer.  One 
of  the  woman  had  a  water- jug. 

"Give  me  a  drink!"  stammered  Enrique. 
"Water!  I'm  dying  of  thirst!" 

He  raised  the  lip  of  the  jug  to  his  mouth, 
and  drank  in  huge  swallows.  The  women  kept 
saying: 

"You're  wounded.  Poor  man !  You'd  bet- 
ter hurry  to  the  hospital!" 

To  avoid  waking  suspicion,  Darles  an- 
swered : 

"Yes,  I'm  on  my  way  there,  now." 

Then  he  swallowed  a  few  more  mouthfuls, 
and  fled  toward  the  Calle  de  Segovia.  He  ran 
a  long,  long  time,  till  his  last  strength  was 
gone.  He  stopped  then,  and  gathered  his  wits 
together.  His  wet  clothes  were  glued  to  his 
body,  giving  him  a  disagreeable  feeling  of  cold. 
His  hands  were  red.  What  he  had  believed  to 
be  sweat,  was  blood. 

"I'm  wounded!"  he  murmured. 

Then  he  understood  what  the  women  at 
Puerta  Cerrada  had  told  him.  Just  at  that 
moment  a  slight  nausea  overcame  him,  and  he 
had  to  lean  against  a  wall.  Presently  he 
opened  his  eyes,  and  looked  about  him.  He 


170  THE  NECKLACE 

was  in  a  steep,  deserted  little  alleyway,  with 
humble  houses  on  either  hand.  Very  near, 
looming  up  against  the  black  immensity  of  the 
sky,  appeared  the  huge  mole  of  El  Viaducto 
— that  splendid,  sinister  height,  that  bridge 
spanning  the  city,  whence  so  many  a  poor  soul 
had  bowed  itself  down  to  death  in  the  leap  of 
suicide. 

Enrique  Darles  began  to  think  again: 

"Yes,  I'm  really  wounded." 

His  ideas  became  more  coherent.  He 
thought  of  Alicia,  of  his  little  room  in  the 
Calle  de  la  Ballesta.  He  felt  of  his  pockets. 
His  fingers  closed  on  the  necklace — "Her 
necklace !" 

The  student  smiled.  Unspeakable  joy 
soothed  his  troubled  heart.  He  sighed,  and 
wiped  away  a  few  tears.  Alicia  was  his !  The 
book  of  his  life  was  written,  was  at  an  end. 


CANDELAS  and  Alicia  were  coming 
back  in  a  landau  from  the  race-track. 
The  afternoon  had  been  unseason- 
ably chilly,  but  the  sun  had  shone 
brightly,  and  the  races  had  been  exciting. 
Alicia  smiled,  contented.  She  had  won  eight 
hundred  pesetas,  and  her  eyes  still  beheld  the 
jockeys  speeding  with  dizzy  swiftness  against 
the  background  of  the  April  landscape. 

There  suddenly,  in  the  last  half  of  the  race, 
a  horse  had  leaped  ahead  from  that  party-col- 
ored group  of  red,  blue  and  yellow  blouses  and 
of  white  trousers.  A  horse  had  sped  away  to 
cross  the  tape;  and  she  had  found  herself  a 
winner. 

There  was  something  personal,  something 
flattering  to  her  vanity,  in  this  triumph. 

"The  count's  jockey  rides  like  a  centaur," 
she  exclaimed.  "He's  English,  isn't  he?" 

"No,  Belgian,"  Candelas  answered. 

Alicia  hardly  remembered,  very  clearly, 
where  the  Low  Countries  might  be.  This  aij^ 

171 


172        ,  THE   NECKLACE 

swer  did  not  satisfy  her.  But  no  matter ;  after 
all,  it  was  enough  for  her  to  know  the  victori- 
ous jockey  had  come  from  one  of  those  north- 
ern countries  where  all  the  men  are  blond  and 
well-dressed. 

Candelas  began  to  explain  the  blind  faith 
that  the  count,  her  friend,  had  in  this  remark- 
able Belgian  connoisseur  of  horses.  Then  she 
briefly  outlined  the  brilliant  program  of  trav- 
els and  pleasures  the  count  and  she  were  plan- 
ning. Along  toward  the  beginning  of  May 
they  would  go  to  London,  and  in  June  to 
Paris,  where  the  count  was  hoping  to  win  the 
grand  prix  at  Longchamps.  They  expected 
to  pass  the  autumn  at  Nice. 

Alicia  answered: 

"In  September,  the  little  marquis  and  I  will 
be  going  to  Monte  Carlo.  You  and  I  simply 
must  see  each  other,  there.  There's  not  much 
fun  just  with  the  men,  you  know.  They  don't 
really  know  how  to  amuse  us." 

When  the  landau  reached  the  Plaza  de  Cas- 
telar,  Alicia  asked  her  friend: 

"Have  you  anything  on  for  to-night?" 

"No." 

"Well  then,  come  to  the  Teatro  Real  with 
me.  They're  going  to  give  the  divine  Bizet's 


THE   NECKLACE  173 

Carmen,  and  Nasi  and  Pacteschi  are  going  to 
sing.  Enough  said!" 

Candelas  accepted. 

"And  now,"  said  Alicia,  "I  want  to  go  home, 
to  see  if  any  important  message  has  come. 
Then  I'll  take  you  home,  dear.  You  can 
change  your  dress  and  we'll  go  get  Manuel,  so 
he'll  invite  us  out  to  supper." 

The  carriage  stopped  before  Alicia's  door. 
Teodora,  who  had  been  on  the  balcony,  hur- 
ried down.  She  had  a  letter  in  her  hand. 

"This  came  for  you,"  said  she. 

"Who  from?" 

"From  Sefior  Enrique." 

"Enrique!"  repeated  Alicia,  surprised.  And 
she  tore  the  envelope  with  feverish  haste.  She 
read: 

"Come  to  my  room,  I  beg  you.  I  must  see 
you  to-day,  without  fail." 

The  only  signature  was  ffE.  D." 

Alicia  seemed  to  ponder.  She  peered  at 
her  friend. 

"Do  you  understand  this?"  asked  she.  "It's 
from  Enrique  Darles.  Remember  him?  A 
young  chap — Manuel's  friend." 

Then  she  asked  Teodora: 


174  THE  NECKLACE 

"Who  brought  this?" 

"An  old  woman." 

"What  kind  of  a  looking  woman?" 

"I  don't  know.  Well — she  looked  like  a 
janitress." 

Alicia  lacked  decision  how  to  act.  The  curt 
authority  of  those  few  words  had  created  a 
good  deal  of  an  impression  on  her.  This  was 
the  letter  of  a  man;  children  cannot  speak 
thus.  An  impatient  hand,  perhaps  a  desper- 
ate one,  had  written  with  vigorous  letters  the 
one  word,  "Urgent,"  on  the  envelope. 

"What  shall  we  do?"  asked  she. 

"When  he  summons  you,  that  way,"  judged 
Candelas,  "something  serious  must  have  hap- 
pened to  him.  Well " 

Alicia  looked  at  her  watch.  It  was  just  six. 
Without  upsetting  the  program  for  the  even- 
ing, she  could  still  afford  the  luxury  of  a  little 
condescension.  She  ordered  the  coachman: 

"Number  X,  Calle  Ballesta.    Hurry!" 

For  a  moment  the  two  young  women  re- 
mained silent.  Suddenly  Candelas  exclaimed: 

"Have  you  seen  what  the  papers  have  been 
saying  about  the  robbery  in  Calle  Mayor,  last 
night?" 

"No.    What  about  it?" 


THE   NECKLACE  175 


"Oh,  a  jeweler's  shop  was  robbed." 

"A  jeweler's!"  repeated  Alicia. 

Her  face  assumed  an  expression  of  unspeak- 
able anxiety  and  alarm.  She  remembered  the 
emerald  necklace  she  had  spoken  of,  so  often; 
and  she  remembered  the  evening,  too,  when 
Candelas  and  she  had  come  across  Enrique 
standing  motionless  in  front  of  the  shop  win- 
dow. Suddenly  the  student's  sad  face  seemed 
to  rise  up  in  her  memory.  She  seemed  to  be 
hearing  his  last  words :  "You've  never  proved 
me.  You  don't  know  what  kind  of  a  man  I 
ami"  And  those  words,  that  she  had  never 
paid  any  attention  to,  now  sounded  in  her  ears 
with  prophetic  tones. 

"What  did  they  steal?"  she  asked. 

"I  can't  say.  I  only  just  glanced  over  the 
paper." 

"And  who's  the  thief?" 

"No  one  knows." 

"Haven't  they  caught  him?" 

"No.    He  was  too  quick  for  them." 

"And  he  got  away?" 

"Yes." 

The  mystery  surrounding  the  criminal  in- 
creased Alicia's  uneasiness.  Still,  it  was  an 
agreeable  sensation,  which  caused  her  a  certain 


176  THE  NECKLACE 

vanity.  "Suppose  the  robbery  really  has  been 
done  for  me!"  she  thought.  She  felt  a  proud, 
unhealthy  emotion,  like  that  of  man  when  he 
meets  his  friends  and  they  know  some  woman 
has  killed  herself  for  love  of  him. 

Candelas,  who  could  read  Alicia's  thoughts, 
exclaimed : 

"Strange  if  the  criminal  were  Enrique 
Darles!" 

"I  don't  think  it  could  be!" 

"Well,  now— it  might." 

"That  would  be  a  terribly  bad  thing  for  him 
to  have  done." 

"Of  course!" 

"But  if  he  really  did  do  it,  I  don't  care!  Let 
the  fool  suffer  for  it.  Did  I  tell  him  to?  When 
you  come  right  down  to  it,  even  if  I  had,  what 
the  devil?  The  one  that  does  a  thing  is  more 
to  blame  than  the  one  that  asks  him  to!" 

The  carriage  stopped,  and  Alicia  and  Can- 
delas got  out.  They  made  their  way  in  under 
a  poverty-stricken  doorway.  Candelas  called: 

"Janitress!   Janitress!" 

No  answer. 

"Follow  me,"  said  Alicia.  "I  know  the  way." 

She  started  along,  daintily  holding  up  her 
pearl-hued  petticoat  and  shaking  the  big  plume 


THE  NECKLACE  177 

of  her  hat  with  a  graceful  motion.  They  went 
through  a  damp,  ugly  yard,  then  another,  and 
began  to  climb  a  high  stairway.  The  silken 
frou-frou  of  their  skirts  and  the  tinkling  of 
their  bangled  bracelets  broke  the  stillness. 
They  reached  the  fourth  story,  and  stopped  in 
front  of  a  door  that  stood  ajar.  Alicia  tapped 
with  her  knuckles.  No  one  answered.  She 
knocked  again.  A  voice,  the  voice  of  Enrique, 
feebly  answered  from  within: 

"Come!" 

The  girls  found  themselves  in  a  dark  room 
that  stank  of  blood.  Alicia  could  not  repress 
a  coarse  exclamation  of  disgust. 

"How  sickening!  Phew!"  she  cried.  "What's 
this  smell?" 

At  the  end  of  the  room,  the  silhouette  of  the 
bed  was  dimly  visible.  From  that  bed,  En- 
rique Darles  stammered: 

"There,  on  the  little  table— you'll  find 
matches.  Light — the  lamp." 

Candelas  stood  motionless,  near  the  door, 
afraid  of  stumbling  over  something.  When 
Alicia  had  made  a  light,  the  two  friends  cast  a 
rapid  glance  about  the  room.  The  only  fur- 
niture was  a  writing-table,  a  bureau  with  a 
looking-glass  on  it,  and,  along  the  walls,  half 


178  THE  NECKLACE 

a  dozen  rush-bottomed  chairs.  The  student 
was  lying,  fully  dressed,  on  the  bed.  Against 
the  whiteness  of  the  pillow,  his  crisp  and  very 
black  hair  lay  motionless.  He  opened  his  eyes, 
a  moment,  and  then,  very  slowly,  closed  them 
again.  Over  his  beardless  face,  saddened  by 
the  pallor  of  his  lips,  wandered  the  ethereal, 
luminous  whiteness  of  the  last  agony. 

The  two  girls  drew  near  him.    Alicia  called : 

"Enrique!  Enrique!" 

He  half -opened  his  eyes.  His  dark  pupils 
fixed  their  gaze  on  Little  Goldie,  in  a  look  of 
gratitude.  She  repeated: 

"Enrique!    Can  you  hear  me?" 

"Yes." 

"They  shot  you,  did  they?" 

"Yes." 

"You — committed  that — robbery  in  the 
Calle  Mayor?" 

"Yes." 

Alicia  looked  exultingly  at  Candelas,  as  if 
asking  her  to  take  full  cognizance  of  this  ex- 
ploit of  hers.  Her  expression  showed  the 
same  kind  of  pride  that  people  sometimes  man- 
ifest when  they  are  exhibiting  a  work  of  art. 
She  had  just  won  a  great  triumph,  because 
men  dare  such  crimes  only  for  women  capably 


THE   NECKLACE  179 

of  inspiring  mad  love.  Then  the  girl  lowered 
her  head  again,  to  look  more  carefully  at  the 
student's  clothing;  and  as  she  found  it  all 
stained  with  blood  she  felt  a  new  attack  of 
nausea.  The  contrast  was  too  sharp  between 
the  hot,  sickening  air  of  that  long-closed  room 
and  the  life-giving  breeze  of  the  street. 

"Shall  I  open  the  window?"  asked  she. 

"No,  no,"  murmured  Enrique.  "I'm  very 
weak.  The  cold  would  kill  me." 

Alicia,  seated  on  the  bed — that  poor  bed  one 
night  perfumed  with  violets  by  her  body — si- 
lently looked  at  him.  A  broad-brimmed  crim- 
son hat,  decked  with  a  splendid  white  plume, 
shaded  her  pale  face.  Her  green  eyes  shone 
wickedly  in  the  livid,  bluish  circles  under  them. 
The  free-and-easy  grace  of  her  manner,  the 
childish  shortness  of  her  waist,  the  robust  full- 
ness of  her  hips  and  breast,  and  the  uneasiness 
with  which  her  impatient,  dancing  little  feet 
tapped  the  floor  as  if  they  wanted  to  run  away, 
strongly  contrasted  with  the  ugliness  of  the 
room — the  bare,  half-furnished  room  heavy 
with  the  odors  of  death. 

Candelas  seemed  truly  moved.  But  Alicia 
felt  as  if  she  were  choking.  The  terrible  nau- 
sea kept  gaining  on  her.  Now  and  then  she 


180  THE  NECKLACE 

raised  her  lace  handkerchief  to  her  pleasure- 
loving  nose — her  nose  which  all  the  afternoon 
had  breathed  the  free,  fresh  air  of  the  race- 
track. Her  growing  disgust  overcame  her  dis- 
tress. She  could  not  weep.  And  after  all, 
why  should  she?  Just  so  she  could  get  away 
from  there  quickly,  little  cared  she  whether 
Enrique  lived  a  few  hours  more  or  less.  In 
her  abysmal  ingratitude,  Alicia  Pardo  won- 
dered that  women  could  love  a  man  so  much  as 
to  kiss  his  dead  lips. 

Suddenly,  anxious  to  have  it  all  over,  she 
asked: 

"But — how  did  they  wound  you?" 

Enrique  opened  his  eyes  again,  and  then  his 
lips. 

"I'll  tell  you,"  said  he. 

Despite  the  terrible  bleeding  he  had  suf- 
fered, some  little  strength  still  remained  in 
him.  This  last,  dying  strength  enabled  him 
to  speak. 

"I  stole  for  you,  Alicia,"  he  gasped,  "be- 
cause you  told  me,  that  evening  you  sent  me 
away,  I  could  see  you  again  when  I  should 
bring  you  the  necklace  you  wanted." 

Alicia  exclaimed: 

"I  don't  remember  that!" 


THE  NECKLACE  181 

"Well,  I  dol  You  told  me  so.  I  remember 
it  all." 

The  young  woman  shrugged  her  shoulders. 
Her  impure  eyes,  of  absinthe  hue,  were  moist- 
ened by  no  tear.  Candelas,  on  the  other  hand, 
was  showing  herself  more  human,  far  more  a 
woman.  Her  eyes  were  drowned  with  grief. 
Enrique  continued  speaking.  His  manner  was 
grave.  Quite  suddenly  the  youth  had  become 
a  man. 

"I  decided  to  win  you  back,"  said  he,  "to 
offer  you  the  thing  you  wanted  so  much.  Last 
night,  when  I  went  into  that  shop,  I  wasn't 
perfectly  sure  what  I  was  going  to  do.  Still, 
I  went  up  to  the  counter,  and  told  them  I 
wanted  to  see  the  emerald  necklace  in  the  win- 
dow. When  they  brought  it,  with  some  others, 
a  kind  of  dizziness  came  over  me.  It  veiled 
my  eyes  with  dark,  terrible  shadows.  I  thrust 
out  my  hand,  swiftly  took  one  of  the  necklaces 
— I  didn't  know  which,  because  they  all  looked 
green  to  me — and  ran.  But  the  proprietor 
must  have  been  spying  every  movement  of 
mine.  He  pulled  a  revolver,  and  fired.  His 
aim  was  good.  At  that  moment  I  felt  nothing, 
and  kept  on  running.  Voices  shouted  after 
me:  'Stop  thief  1  Stop  thief!'  I  seemed  tp 


182  THE  NECKLACE 

see  revengeful  hands,  eager  to  catch  me,  open- 
ing and  shutting  like  claws,  behind  me. 

"When  I  came  to  my  senses,  I  was  in  a  de- 
serted alleyway.  My  pursuers  hadn't  been 
able  to  catch  me.  Then  I  noticed  my  clothes 
were  all  soaked  with  blood,  and  my  knees  were 
shaking.  What  should  I  do  ?  Night  sheltered 
me.  Slowly  I  came  back  here.  To-day,  I  sent 
for  you." 

The  ring-laden  fingers  of  the  girl  twisted  to- 
gether with  a  twofold  motion  of  interest  and 
horror. 

"And  you  haven't  had  any  treatment?" 
asked  she.  "You  haven't  called  a  doctor?" 

"No.  I  didn't  want  to  do  that.  Because  if 
anybody  had  seen  me,  they'd  have  suspected. 
And  I  preferred  to  die,  Alicia,  rather  than  to 
have  them  take  away  the  necklace  I  stole  for 
you." 

Then,  feeling  that  his  last  strength  was  run- 
ning out,  he  added  with  a  little  gesture : 

"There  it  is,  on  the  bureau.  Just  raise  up, 
those  papers — " 

The  scene  was  poignant,  melodramatic  with 
sad  romanticism.  At  last  the  Magdalene's 
eyes  grew  wet. 


THE  NECKLACE  183 


"Boy,  boy!"  she  sobbed.  "What  have  you 
done?" 

Darles  only  repeated: 

"You'll  find  it  there,  on  the  bureau." 

She  did  as  the  student  bade  her  in  his  eager- 
ness not  to  die  before  seeing  his  gift  in  the 
well-beloved's  hands  of  snow  and  pearl.  Un- 
der some  papers  her  fingers  came  upon  a  black 
pearl  necklace. 

"Oh,  how  beautiful!"  she  cried,  enchanted. 

Without  opening  his  eyes,  and  like  a  man 
talking  in  his  sleep,  Darles  answered: 

"It's  not  the  one  you  wanted,  I  know.  I 
found  that  out,  afterward.  But — at  that  mo- 
ment, they  all  looked  green  to  me." 

Thus  befell  one  more  event,  one  more  ca- 
price of  the  bitter  and  eternal  irony  of  things. 
To  give  one's  life  for  a  necklace,  an  emerald 
necklace,  and  then  to  get  the  wrong  onel  The 
student  murmured : 

"Good-by!" 

A  long  shudder  trembled  through  his  body. 
Suddenly  the  shadow  of  death  gave  his  face  a 
stern,  manly  severity.  His  lips  twisted.  Can- 
delas,  kneeling  beside  the  bed,  wept  and 
prayed.  Alicia,  more  violent  in  disposition, 
caught  Enrique  by  the  shoulder, 


184  THE   NECKLACE 

"Enrique!"  she  cried.    "Enrique!" 

And  for  a  moment  she  looked  at  him  with 
one  of  those  tragic,  passionate  expressions  that 
sometimes  explain  the  sacrifice  of  a  life.  The 
student  could  still  whisper: 

"Remember—!" 

This  was  his  final  word.  His  eyes  drooped 
shut.  He  died  quietly,  with  no  bleeding  at  the 
lips.  A  whitish  aura  spread  over  his  face.  Ali- 
cia exclaimed: 

"Enrique!     Can  you  hear  me?    Enrique!" 

She  felt  of  his  forehead,  his  hands.  He  was 
dead. 

"He's  gone,"  said  she. 

This  too,  in  her  way  of  thinking,  was  ad- 
mirable. Came  a  pause.  Candelas  had  got 
up,  and  now  the  two  friends  questioned  each 
other  with  their  eyes.  The  same  idea,  the  same 
terror  had  just  struck  them  both.  Enrique's 
death  would  compromise  them.  The  law  would 
institute  researches,  and  the  girls  might  easily 
be  called  upon  to  testify.  Instincts  of  self- 
preservation  drove  memories  of  the  dead  man 
from  them. 

"We're  in  a  terrible  position,"  said  Alicia. 
"It's  all  your  fault.  I  didn't  want  to  come," 

Angrily  Candelas  retorted; 


THE  NECKLACE  185 

"It's  your  fault!" 

"Mine?" 

"Of  course!  Who  made  him  steal,  but  you?" 

"i  did?  ir 

"Yes,  you  idiot!" 

In  Candelas'  voice  quivered  that  envious  an- 
ger felt  by  all  women  against  any  for  whose 
sake  a  man  has  ruined  himself.  Then  she 
added,  more  calmly: 

"It's  lucky,  anyhow,  the  janitress  didn't  see 
us  coming  up  here." 

Alicia  Pardo  examined  the  necklace.  Her 
egotistic  soul,  enamored  of  luxury,  her  little 
soul,  that  worshiped  loot  and  gain,  was  now 
thinking  of  nothing  but  the  beauty  of  the  jew- 
els. Standing  in  front  of  the  looking-glass, 
she  clasped  the  necklace  round  her  throat  and 
began  to  turn  her  head  from  side  to  side.  The 
contrast  made  by  the  blackness  of  the  pearls 
on  the  ermine  whiteness  of  her  throat  gave  her 
pleasure.  And  for  a  moment  her  eyes  burned 
with  the  insolent  strength  of  happiness. 

What  had  happened  was  by  no  means  caus- 
ing her  any  remorse.  Why  should  it?  Was  it 
her  fault  if  Enrique  had  taken  in  earnest  what 
she  had  asked  him  by  way  of  jest?  Philosoph- 
ically she  reflected  that  the  history  of  every 


186  THE  NECKLACE 

courtesan  always  contains  at  least  one  tragic 
chapter.  Then  her  mind  drifted  toward  a 
shade  of  irony.  Poor  Enrique!  The  unfor- 
tunate boy,  she  pondered,  was  one  of  those 
luckless  ones  who  never  realize  their  dream, 
even  though  they  lay  down  their  lives  for  it. 

At  last,  moved  more  by  a  feeling  of  tender- 
ness than  by  any  artistic  delicacy,  she  drew 
near  the  corpse,  to  say  farewell  with  one  last 
look.  At  the  door,  Candelas  summoned  her: 

"Let's  be  going!    Come!" 

Alicia  Pardo  turned.  There  was  really  noth- 
ing more  for  her  to  do  there.  The  thick  air  of 
that  room,  the  tiled  floor  all  covered  with  crim- 
son blotches,  stifled  her.  Out  in  the  street  she 
would  breathe  deeply  again.  And  she  reflect- 
ed that  her  necklace  of  black  pearls  would  at- 
tract attention,  that  night,  at  the  Teatro  Real. 
She  felt  no  sadness.  As  she  passed  in  front 
of  the  mirror,  she  cast  a  sidelong  glance  at  her- 
self. 

"It's  a  pretty  necklace,  all  right,"  thought 
she. 

Then  she  added,  with  a  vague  regret: 

"Still,  I'd  have  liked  the  emeralds  bet- 
ter  " 


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